Why does everyone try a NEW idea?

Because I still want to feel that I invented something? :)

Also, copying existing businesses is pointless: they must've already proved their ability to execute while you are just starting out and have no credibility. So there needs to be some unique selling proposition in your product. Competing by simply offering the same product for cheaper is risky — hence competing by offering some unique mechanics is the only way left.

Creating is fun

Agreed. I put my head together with a few guys some years ago to build something; they felt we needed to invent something nobody’s ever heard or thought of. I suggested we start off by building something known and understood, even if only as practice. They would have none of it. They thought I was insane and unfit for even thinking it.

I looked at all my previous jobs. I listed things that were time consuming and painful. I started looking at the forum discussions and saw the alternative was fixing the problem in a manual and time intensive way.

I want to innovate and NOT imitate. I want to build a product for an unmet need. There are very few products that does something similar but not exactly what I had in mind.

I emailed about 1000 people in my target market. I got 2.6% response rate to validate the pain and whether companies will be willing to pay for the solution. I plan on building a Mock API to show my target market what the end product will look like. I created a prospects list who are eager to hear about the solution to the problem.

It took some time to write scripts to find the emails. I sent the emails manually and I followed up with the replies. I kept track of their feedback about the problem in a spreadsheet.

My idea validation was a simple one line question. It was a vague and confusing question. Now I have refined it so it is clear and not too abstract and confusing. I realized a short question can spark a good discussion. Especially if the developers have experienced the problem and are eager to see if there is a better way to get their job done.

I learned so much about the problem, current tools and possible ways to solve the problem that I can now write a 50 pages PDF report and use that as a lead magnet to generate leads from a simple landing page.

It also made me think through the differentiation factors with the existing solutions. I now know the unique selling proposition. The concept is ready to be tested with a landing page.

I started a B2B tech company on what you would call a "crowded" market or category. Some of my learnings :

• Yes, market is proven by competitors, if the market is big enough there is space for your company however,

• Have/build differentiation from day one. Otherwise prospects will see you as some sort of copycat of one of the existing competitors.

• If your product will take time to launch, start building a community as early as possible.

• Observe competitors to identify how they grow their businesses BUT validate your findings with your own experiments and talking to customers. Otherwise you won't learn why they are doing it.

To me, it looks like most projects have at least some sort of competition but all educational resource are about talking to customer & finding product-market fit, not how to use the competition knowledge to grow ¯\(ツ)/¯

I've been wondering about this too. If you walk through a city or browse the internet, you see so many business models that just work. I think this is where the division between startup and traditional business gets blurry.

People think it's easier to make a business work when it is based on something that didn't exist before. This is true in some regard, but only if the market actually wants it.