Entering a pre-existing market
Hello friends,
First, thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts. I am an infrastructure engineer at a big tech company. Infrastructure is what I like to do and where most of my added value lies. I am also passionate about internet privacy.
Given all the above, I want to create a VPN provider. Some thoughts:
- Able to leverage my existing skills
- TAM is growing 15% YoY from $25B today to $75B by 2027
- Existing demand means the market is proven
- Internet privacy industry in its infancy, avenues for expanding scope/pivoting
- Already have ideas for marketing (easy to virtue-signal in this industry)
Cons:
- Existing players are already well entrenched
- No real differentiator as of yet
I am uncomfortable with trying to create a new market and I think my personality and desires are more aligned with entering an existing one. The project's code footprint is mostly backend which will be an advantage for me (I can develop apps but I wouldn't say I am good at it yet.) The industry is growing. I believe in the product.
Could anyone with experience share their thoughts on entering an existing market, is my plan realistic and what are the challenges I am likely to face?
Good to see your validation in this space. Would building this require building your own infrastructure? Would cloud providers allow such solutions today?
Did you think about decentralization in this space? Could such private networks be bootstrapped in a decentralized way? Something like a people-powered network. Is that a possibility?
I see there are trust issues and I recently search for No Log VPN. Maybe there are sub-niches in this space. Maybe something just focused on Netflix or content streaming which are blocked in certain countries.
Hey wilson, thanks a lot for your thoughtful answer! As far as I can see multiple providers are willing to provide VPN providers with unlimited bandwidth, although I will have to do a cost analysis to understand my potential margins there.
I think decentralization might be the ultimate state of that industry (and and very desirable feature when it comes to internet privacy) but it's not really possible at this point technically: people's bandwidth are not symetrical enough (not enough upload).
I think nolog is a requirement, I know that NordVPN is located in Panama because they do not require data retention by law. It's an interesting risk that I will explore, thank you for pointing it out.
Take care,