When she already has a boyfriend! 🙇♂️ I am feeling exactly like this with my idea.
🌱 The Problem (Opportunity) started with
Recently I took 2 new part-time jobs as Product Lead. Apart from that I already run my own small dev shop and am also a part of one of my client's work calendars. So in total, I ended up having 5 google accounts with 4 work & 1 personal calendar.
🛡 The Quest began
I immediately knew that I need to find software that will help me to keep my schedule clean and I won't end up having double-booked at the same time on my different work calendars. So I started searching, I found a lot of calendar tools, focus time block tools, but none have the multiple work calendar sharing options. I found one medium article on how to write a hacky script, but it was only worth it, if I had just 2 calendars to sync, instead I had 5.
I then resorted to Zapeir, created 3-4 zaps, that gets trigger when 1 of my calendar gets an event and creates "Busy" events in all of my other calendars, so anyone trying to schedule a meeting, will see the blocked slot. It was such a long, and tedious process I Zapier, also it was expensive as hell and buggy. I tried it for 4-5 days and made sure to not upgrade my account to avoid charges after my 30 days trial period. In short, it was an unsuccessful experiment.
🏔 I can see the first milestone
I absolutely needed this product and wasn't able to find it, maybe I didn't use enough or the right keywords in Google. So I decided to build one to solve my problem, that's how the best products are born, from your problems, right? I was excited to have this moment, which I never had before, a critical problem, with no product the idea is a b2b model (profitability is easier to measure), the target audience is there. So I drafted a basic MVP and started working on the backend. My plan was to build an MVP, validate the tech stack, test it on myself, and then invite early beta users.
I am struck by a ⚡️
1 week in, I have validated the tech & flow of the MVP. I opened up Notion, created a task - Design research, started searching again for the keywords, and this time I found the exact product I wanted to create.
It exists!! I went ahead and thought, but it surely would be lacking something right? But it comes out as a great tool, great UX, design, features which I had in my 1-year roadmap, users already using for 1.5 years, really experienced founders, backed by expert investors & almost 5 million dollars in funding. Though they still aren't that discoverable, that's changing pretty fast. I can see that.
Now BOOM 💣, I am stuck in a dilemma
- Should I still go ahead and create the product? - I want to because this idea felt so right. I might be sounding stupid, but I really wanted to do this.
- Will I be labeled as a copycat? - Of course!! I will be. Though that was not my intention and rationally there has to be a competitor in the market. There's always a number 2 to a number 1 product.
- I want to stay bootstrapped. Is it sustainable to compete with this startup, when they are giving away their product for free this whole year? And I would like to price mine, at least something. I know they won't be free next year and I can play at pricing, given I won't have company expenses and I don't have to provide all the features, instead focus on the simplest way to solve the problem with fewer clicks than them (It will be hard, they have a pretty awesome UX). And if I can build few fans & validate my positioning, I will stop competing at price as my baseline instead of transition to unique value as I believe that helps in creating a successful and happy product as well as personal life.
So the ultimate ❓ is
Is this a 🤦♂️ facepalm moment or a 🧗♂️ climb on champ moment?
I will be the devil's advocate, a bit tired of the feel-good comments.
Do you want to develop this product for yourself? By any means, it's your free time. We all have some side-projects that we know won't go anywhere financial-wise, it doesn't matter. Humans have a right to play and have fun for the sake of it just as much as they have an obligation to contribute to society. You have 4 jobs so you contribute to society more than enough. 😀
I don't particularly like the figure of speech you used: "when she already has a boyfriend"; but since this is how you describe how you're feeling then I'm going to develop the sentence further and say that when she already has a boyfriend and you keep pursuing that, you're gonna get a slap in the face. In the best case.
I'll put here some things that your friends won't tell you, your family won't tell you and other contributors here don't seem very eager to tell you either.
Can you beat a 5 million dollars funded company? Yes. That's why we are all here and we exist. 👍
But.
Can you do it by developing exactly the same product and features they have? No. Move on.
By having 4 jobs at the same time? No. Move on.
By "sharing here and there"? No. Move on.
By having better prices? No. Move on.
ooh..thanks Andy for the reality shakedown. The last points you shared are exactly what my other part is telling me too. And I settled these because I don't exactly have an answer for these, at the stage I am currently on.
Can you do it by developing exactly the same product and features they have? - I can improve the product & features they have, but only after spending time doing research and product designing. So I need to take a step to find this out.
By having 4 jobs at the same time? - I am pretty good at living async life and that's how I choose my jobs too. I definitely can side hustle on a project and can only decide to move on or not, after few months in.
By "sharing here and there"? - This is one skill I am hoping to learn - Marketing via sharing. Again I can only learn if I move forward.
By having better prices? - This is definitely trickier and a fair amount of testing will be required. Again I can only know if I move forward.
The phrase "When she already has a boyfriend" is kinda clickbait and this is my first IH post ever, so I tried playing with a bit of creativity. Although the feeling of man is honestly the same, the action however will have to be different, I don't want to be slapped on the face, it hurts!! haha
Making a product isn't the hard part. It's marketing it.
If you're super excited about the idea, and ready to put in the time, effort, and money to market/promote your product/SaaS, then I'd say give it a go.
It would be helpful to do something better than the competitor's product. But customers won't likely choose your app over the competitor's on that alone, especially if they appear to be more established.
You'd have to have something notably more compelling for people to want to give your app a try over the other.
I agree, and that's one area I need to work on. Marketing and will be learning a lot about it when executing this idea.
I am going with the idea, will start with my personal use, share here and there, and let's see how it goes.
I'm super surprised you can't just use a shared calendar feature, I know they exist inside paid orgs I'm not 100% sure but I think you can import them with availablity which is what your looking for...
To me it sounds a bit niched, but do some keyword research to assess the size and worth of the market, finding a competitor makes market research easier
Employers don't give sharing permissions, and I think it's by default turned off. Then there is a piece to automate a new event in the rest of your calendars, so everyone trying to schedule a meeting will be able to see that the event is blocked. You can choose to show what you might be doing or I prefer just make it private & show "Busy".
Yep it is a niche, and I was surprised too there isn't a product and the one that I found out about, is relatively new too. I was doubting my keywords research too when I was looking for the product, I think part of the reason is the many productivity/calendar keywords are associated with this problem, but none of them offer this solution.
I actually found out about this product from a Hacker news comment, posted back in 2019. And the competitor website now comes at around 4-5 place for the keyword. I guess they weren't doing SEO and were focusing on the product first, and now they have a dedicated content strategy in place.
If you use things like semrush, aherfs and similar you can discover where they are having success probably and how big the market might be...
Besides solving the problem, the part about marketing is finding out if the target people are easily accessible, sometimes that can be a down point if it's hard to address that crowd or it might be a cost add that one needs to account for like in the case of bigger companies that have a long sales cycle
Think more if you can add value rather than if you'd be able to charge less
If you can actually put a product that charges more with a better solution that's a good indication that the problem has merits still for more players (as a theoretical practice)
Yes, I totally agree with creating value over competing with pricing. I never want to compete on pricing. Thanks for the reminder 🙌
If you feel you can do it, then go for it. Just make sure you make your product differentiable from your competitor, market it better, and do play with prices (while keeping in mind that if your competitor is free to use, it's not in your favor).
I don't like to make this comparison, but even if she has a boyfriend, homes can be wrecked if you're a better match 🤷
Yayy, that's what I am thinking too. Prices will come into the equation, once their free offer is closed, which will be next year. Till then I will build the product, use it, improve it, and share it here and there. Keeping my goals flexible, and I think it's important I start this journey and carve out my own path, maybe I will reach a totally different summit or maybe an oasis. But I have to start to know that.
haha..can't wait to be called a homewrecker 🔨
Similar situation.
At first, I thought I was on to opt-in a solution to solve my scheduling problem. Eventually I built up a discipline to block my time and say “no”.
I’ve a full-time day job (MS Outlook), 1 personal and 4 side projects (all Gmail)
It’s painful to look at those calendar lol
So instead, I clean my schedule every Monday, block my time and I use TimeTree on iPhone to be the master calendar.