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19 Comments

Does having competitors scare you?

Hey Indie Hackers, I've been thinking about the competition yesterday and if people are afraid of it or embrace it.

From my position I can say that I'm building the tool that I MYSELF would love to use, so it's a specific vision of the solution to the problem - so it's irrelevant if there are competitors who are building something similar.

What is your take on it?

  1. 4

    I like having competitors, because you know there is a market.
    And you can always create something with a twist (better design, cheaper, different implementation, etc...)

    The best case is having competitors with old or really bad products.

    1. 2

      Oh i like the thing about the old really bad products. I think the whole Healthcare ecosystem falls into that definition.

      1. 2

        Yes, but I'd be be cautious about it, especially in sectors such as Healthcare. Sometimes when all products in the space are bad it can be a clue that it's very hard for customers to switch to another product :)

  2. 3

    It's been helpful on our end because it brings potential users higher on the ladder of product awareness. Instead of telling users why they need the product, we can demonstrate why ours is better.

  3. 3

    It did yesterday when I found LunchMoney, a big competitor to me. But some time later I realized this confirms that people are willing to pay for it (she has 1000+ paying users!) and I'll probably have different USP's, such as being located in the EU (with regards to the GDPR).

    1. 1

      Is that also built by indie founder?

      1. 2

        Yes and she's even on Indiehackers.

  4. 2

    It does and it doesn't.

    You can be the first to market & dominate an industry, which resolves a lot of traction issues early on.

    However, having competitors can give you an immeasurable source of data to capitalise on and find ways to broaden your competitive point of difference / trade on business strategy weaknesses / steal customers etc.

  5. 2

    I have always had a different view on competitors than most people , I find that those who are dismissive ,usually have never met a tough Thanos level competitor .

    There once was a King of all he surveyed ...and his name was well known throughout the land....His name was AOL....I am quite sure you know the rest of the story .

    My point is there are different levels of competitors in any game/market .

    So to savetim....Ihave copied& pasted thefollowing from something Iposted a few month ago .

    A competitors digital footprint can reveal to you.... where they spend advertising dollars , who their clients are , unknown phone numbers & emails ,new product introductions , areas of interest , website content , cash flow issues , customer demographics , new locations planned / closed , business trip locations , contacts & networks , technical data , product recipes & methods of production , vendors & suppliers used , statements made by former employees & more ....These revealing subjects can be found on the web and all throughout social media...if..you have the right tool set & know where to look .

    EXPLOIT their own weaknesses using these free intelligence gathering tools...

    The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself - Sun Tzu

    relationships between people on LinkedIn
    https://github.com/eth0izzle/the-endorser

    LinkedIn recontool

    https://github.com/arch4ngel/peasant

    TikTok Intelligence Tool

    https://github.com/sc1341/TikTok-OSINT

    TikTok trend analysis tool

    https://github.com/claudiobosetti/TikTokTool

    ***Live, generative visualization of global social media activity.

    https://github.com/USCcorpuscallosum/newsglobe

    **visualizes user reviews from different social sites on a certain topic

    https://github.com/bhavanacse/SocialMediaReviewHarvester

    facebook profile recon system

    https://github.com/pun1sh3r/facebot

    Instagram Intelligence Tool

    https://github.com/sc1341/InstagramOSINT

    Social media scraping / data collection library for Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Pinterest, and Tumblr APIs

    https://github.com/ScriptSmith/socialreaper

    Facebook insights

    https://www.facebook.com/help/268680253165747?sr=1&query=insights&sid=0MqeSup2DIoNSV4Ochttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Finsights%2F

    FB audience insights

    https://www.facebook.com/business/insights/tools/audience-insights

    FB Page Insights

    https://www.facebook.com/business/pages/manage#page_insights

    Twitter Analytics

    https://foller.me/

    Twitter Trends Map

    https://www.trendsmap.com/

    TweetDeck

    https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/

    Keyword Tool for

    Amazon

    ebay

    youTube

    Instagram

    Twitter

    PlayStore

    https://keywordtool.io

    PINTREST

    https://analytics.pinterest.com/

    Pintrest Image Tools

    https://pablo.buffer.com/

    Pin Groupie

    https://pingroupie.com/

    https://analytics.pinterest.com/

    **Scan forums & boards

    http://boardreader.com/

    Intelligence gathering tool

    https://github.com/lanmaster53/recon-ng

    Threat Intelligence Chat Bot

    https://github.com/cylance/CyBot

    Linkedin Learning

    https://github.com/mypan/linkedin_learning_courses_downloader

    automate connections with personalized messages

    https://github.com/mariiio/linkedin_connect

    Xing.com employee tool .

    https://github.com/MarviMalware/Xinger

    reddit data viz

    https://github.com/utkuufuk/reddit-scraper

    Incredibly fast crawler for OSINT.

    https://github.com/s0md3v/Photon

    Information gathering tool

    https://github.com/twelvesec/gasmask

    A social media assistant.

    https://github.com/rysmith/hashrobot

    Data visualization: a map about Facebook page news (by D3js)

    https://github.com/yukonborealis/World-Facebook-Page-News-Map

    Interactive infographic visualizing the size of different social media networks.

    https://github.com/ArjanJ/social-circles

    spiders to crawl instagram posts

    https://github.com/h4t0n/instagram-scraper

    Quick Instagram search tool

    https://github.com/propublica/qis

    The idea is to figure out what they are doing & come up with features and products the competitors would take months in committee to even agree on.....let alone to start building

    https://threejs.org/

    https://observablehq.com/@d3/gallery

    Codepen.io

    ANYTHING OPEN SOURCE

    In the mean time...you can add things they dont have in a day or so

    https://github.com/victordibia/handtracking

    https://github.com/TalAter/annyang

    Hope that helps

    1. 1

      you wild for this! LOL I'm feeling the energy, thank you for these resources even though I won't know how to use most of them hehe

  6. 2

    I usually see competition as either noise or validation so it doesn't usually impact product strategy. That said, it's always interesting to see how different people execute on a similar objective.

  7. 1

    No, it does not. When I look at competitors, they could be one of the following:

    1. produce mediocre product/service
    2. produce great product/service

    If they fall under (1), then its great for me. There is market validation and the barrier to entry is low. If they fall under (2), then I need to dig deep which is great.

  8. 1

    Well, are they scared of having me as a competitor?
    When I started with Price2Spy, there was almost no competition in this area, so whenever someone new appeared, it was a big thing for us.

    Nowadays, new apps and tools pop up on a daily basis so we are used to it, and having some serious competitors can push you forward - companies should learn from each other for their own benefits, and more importantly, for the benefits of the customers.

  9. 1

    Competition, like in sports, motivates businesses to succeed, creating innovation, supply diversity, and affordable costs for both consumers and businesses.

  10. 1

    A big step to becoming an entrepreneur is to embrace competitors and find your own differentiation. There are so many things in business that the product idea is usually just a small part. Brand, trust, customer service, YOU, all matter in why people choose you!

  11. 1

    to put the answer to your question simply, no.

    My take, is that the problems I am going to solve are so vital, they are not about me. At this point I just want them to be solved. I don't care WHO gets it done. I'm tired of losing lives to the lack of mental health support. I'm OVER hearing about the climate crisis. I am constantly asking, "who is in charge here?" after reading news headlines.

    Any "competitors" of mine are working on solving the same important problems that I am and that makes them a potential COLLABORATOR.

    That's my mindset. It sounds like you are not scared of the competition either Vadim. So my question is, what are you scared of?

  12. 1

    I think if you have vision with your product, nothing scares you. No one can't copycat your ideas.

  13. 1

    Competitors provide a great space to learn from, regardless if their team/product is better or worse than yours. Plus, having someone else try and take your pie should only make you work smarter - anything else is a waste of time.

    Conditions do apply.

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