No competitors?
My software solution has no competitors. I hear people say it’s a bad thing because it means nobody needs my solution. I think what it really means is the market has not been validated so I will have an uphill battle educating the market. The reality is I do have competitors, but not software. My competition is services firms, using manual labor to do what I am automating. But I can sell to them too.
If I learned anything in my last job is that I need to broaden my definition of competitors. We built products nobody else was building (but now that’s changed as new entrants release) - but we defined customer internal teams as our primary competitor. It resonated. They knew they couldn’t scale. The work was not getting done. We helped them automate, albeit at slightly lower fidelity. But we learned 80% fidelity across a volume of 50,000 is far better than 100% across 50 or 100. Look to opportunities to scale legacy process. It’s every bit as valid as competing with established players. It just takes some education and awareness.
Innovation is exactly that! If your product is genuinely ground breaking then your competition won't be direct, however it could be indirect like a manual process and as such your processes will replace those existing longer established more lengthy manual processes! well done in that case.
Thanks, I'm really excited about this one! It's not sexy, but it's important and it has major impacts for critical infrastructure and defense, so the implications are staggering.
I have the same situation with my idea but it blew up on HackerNews https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937523 so I'm thinking no competitors is not always a bad sign.
Congrats on your success! That is really awesome! Nice landing page, I hope I can get mine to be as effective as yours. Writing my web copy has taken me so much longer than I anticipated. I know the value, but it's hard to convey in few words.
Yeah conveying your thoughts is harder than coding lol. What helped me is that I start with writing and then do the rest from that. Comparing to when copy was just an afterthought.
I was actually an English major, and normally writing comes very naturally. But the problem I'm solving is so very different that it requires some education. I'm solving a root cause, not a symptom. Its hard to do that succinctly. Much easier when the problem is well-understood already.
This is not self-promotion but my idea is actually relates to this problem as well. All products need to educate their users in some degree and I had this problem myself. That's why I needed some kind of channel where I can post messages to users so I can let them know what is the best way to use product.
Looking to scale legacy processes is exactly the area I'm going into now :D
Just to add, we tend to define "competition" only in terms of other products or services that are (almost exactly) the same as the one we provide. We also need to take into consideration what in marketing is referred to as "alternatives" - products or services that provide a different, but acceptable experience to the buyer.
To use a simple example, let's take movies. If you were a movie studio, your primary competition would be other films that would be released in cinemas on the same day or week your own film would be released. That's their direct competition. But for most consumers, seeing a movie is just one option they have as something to do on a weekend or a date. There are dozens of options at their disposal, depending on where they live. Movie studios take this into account, that's why they bet most of their money on summer blockbusters or holiday openings (e.g., Memorial Day and Holiday screenings).
Great observation. Competitors doesn't need to be same category. All customer needs evolve (or devolve, depends on how you look at it) from service to custom-fit, to product, and finally to commodity[1].
Exactly that, your promotion will be different from an established product-space. Your customer journey will take longer to complete and probably your acquisition cost will be high at the start. But other than that, you should be good.
Good lesson. For any SaaS, the main competitor is always a shitty Excel sheet with slapdash formulas, sitting on somebody's inbox. Never forget that. But to understand "competition" better, I advise checking Jobs to be Done theory.
By the way, if your paragraph is an accurate representation of the market, you have an amazing opportunity to pull a market leader play[2].
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1 - I advise checking Wardley Maps to understand this very important concept.
2 - Must read on the topic: https://kellblog.com/2019/06/02/the-market-leader-play-how-to-run-it-how-to-respond/
Great response, really appreciate the pointer on use of Wardley Maps. Familiar with process of defining value chains, but this one is new for me and looks useful for planning analysis. Thanks!
What a unique way of looking at the competition model! Interesting how the attitudes and work arounds people use can be "competitors", event though it may be substantially different font your idea