Sell Your Competitor's Product

I've been part of several discussions here on IH where someone says...

"I had an idea for a app or website, but I researched and someone else is doing it already. Should I give up and move on?"

Here's my unconventional advice. No - try selling your competitor's product.

Here's why. The first thing you will have to do, is find several people who have the problem you want to solve. Then, reach out to them about the problem and find out how they're solving it or mitigating it today. Then, try to sell them on using your competitor's product.

You will find out so many valuable things about the problem you want to solve. You will learn who has the problem and how to reach them. You will learn how they are solving or working around the problem today. You will learn how important the problem is, and whether they looked for a solution.

And you'll learn what is wrong with "your idea" that your competitor created and put up for sale.

You'll learn just as much about the problem space as you would have, if you built the product yourself and tried to sell it. And although you will spend some uncompensated time selling, that's far less than the uncompensated time you were willing to spend building the product.

Entrepreneurs are often advised to fall in love with problems, not solutions. That's the idea here. If you really care about the problem space, the existence of a competing product is a compelling shortcut to learn more - without spending months building something new.