Building on top of growing market by Sam Altman
The best way to start a business or startup is to build in a growing market instead of a stagnant market. The reason for the is the opportunity is bigger in growing market and also here there is constant changes which is good if you are starting. I learned it from one of Sam Altman talk.
In a stagnant market most of the people already figured out what working and what need to be done , thus it very hard to compete because there is masters and big players in that market. Resources wise and time wise it very difficult to compete with them.
The opposite, in growing market the opportunity is big and everybody is still figuring out what to do and how to do. Any big player or company will always have trouble in this phase as they cannot move fast enough as small startup can.
For me it perfectly good idea the only thing is "figuring out" means you will 100% fail and need to retry again and again.
I am not sure which one is the best but for me growing market is more exciting. What you guys think ?
I think the advice can often hamper indie hackers. A formula for indie hackers is something like; build something you want and that a few other people both want AND will pay for, don't spend too much or money to get to an MVP, relentless engage and listen to your customers.
I've heard the above advice before, and I often find myself chasing these growing markets. Especially for indie hackers, there's enough meat on the bone in any industry you actually care about; and people in that industry crave to have their problems heard, and solved.
Anyway, just my two cents
Definitely resonate with that opinion but I think there’s tradeoffs of both approaches. For example, for a service like search, there is a big demand in the market but your chances of disrupting this industry without innovation are quite slim given giants like Google and Microsoft. That being said, should that discourage you from trying? My thoughts are NO because tools like ChatGPT definitely have the potential to disrupt that space.
For an undiscovered market, the hardest part is probably figuring out 2 questions:
That’s why I really like the idea of Indie hacking, build something fast without dedicating too many resources, launch, test and iterate. If you build something someone finds valuable, can you sell it to a small number of people? Can you then expand on that and sell to more people and deliver value?
One thing to note in this is value creation, doesn’t matter the industry, are you creating enough unique value that people are willing to buy/subscribe to your product?
My 2 cents and I’m happy to be corrected on this if someone can find examples/arguments that work otherwise.
Hey,
You can still be "figuring things out" when you operate in a mature market. As a new entrepreneur, you'd be working out how to position yourself properly, market your services (or products), your distribution channel, managing finance etc. All the operational stuff that comes with entrepreneurship.
In a growing market, at least you know no one else has figured out the value proposition and business model part. The big guys will have operational part nailed.
Personally I'd take a growing market any day. My AI Tour Guide (narratedtours.com) is one example. Without the hype around AI, we would't get as much interest as we do, if we were a pure play Tour Guide tool.
Hope that makes sense.