“Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups | Hacker News Reader

“Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

andrewchen.co

317 pointsmotiw223 comments

Very often engineering types can only think of differentiation in technical terms. I think I can say that, in practice, at least in mature markets, differentiation is more about positioning and marketing rather than almost anything else. Easy examples:

    - Cars
    - Bottled water
    - Computer monitors

The vast majority of automobiles produced today have reached a level of design and manufacturing maturity that makes them pretty much equally reliable and equivalent. The days of a Porsche or BMW being markedly better than a Toyota or Nissan are gone. Sure, we can point at the extremes and find differences, but I am not talking about that, I am focusing on what the vast majority of consumers look for or need in a car. Today you could pick any vehicle almost blindly and not make a purchasing mistake. That was not the case a few decades ago.

How do they differentiate and sell you cars then? Branding, positioning, marketing. They sell the feeling of owning the car rather than any true technical differentiation, because those really don't matter as much in non-technical markets.

Bottle water is another case. I'll generalize and say that most bottled water is pretty much the same. Or, let's put it another way, no bottled water has magical properties that make it significantly better than the others.

Again, marketing. They are selling you an image. In some cases it's a glass bottle with a different feel or a social mission. The product, however, that thing you drink, most of which you are going to urinate, is basically the same. If you position the product well you can command much higher pricing than the competition.

Computer monitors fall under the same category. Nobody cares any more outside of those using them for very specific applications. There are only a few companies who make LCD panels. Every single computer monitor buys from them. So, if you buy a 24 inch HP vs a Dell monitor they very likely have exactly the same LG or Samsung panel inside. They might even share the rest of the electronics. For most computer users these products are perfectly interchangeable; they just don't care because it makes no difference at all.

Not sure how computer monitor makers differentiate their offerings any more to the masses. Sure, there are folks who are more comfortable with one brand over the other (despite the fact that it might actually be exactly the same product inside) and, of course, there's pricing. This is one example of the fact that significant differentiation might not always be an absolute necessity in order to have a successful billion dollar business.

One area where they do differentiate --although consumers never see it-- would be in the terms and relationship they have with distributors and retailers. This is a big money play. For example, HP could drop two million dollars of inventory into Best Buy warehouses, effectively on consignment, and get paid based on what is sold. Best Buy, will, of course, push those products because they represent pure profit without any capital investment to speak of. This is a distribution chain differentiation that drives sales rather than differentiation to drive consumer behavior.

Books have been written about this topic. I've read a few of them over the years. Still much to learn.

You can do the apple thing, but imo that's more than just marketing abs branding. To be a startup though (work radical growth) it's likely you'll be able to do and sustain that only with marketing and branding as a differentiator. Imo.

"You can do the apple thing"

Who can?

Care to share the book names?

Classics:

https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/00...

https://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/d...

Seth Godin is another author well worth reading:

https://www.amazon.com/Seth-Godin/e/B000AP9EH0

And a few others:

https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Disruptive-Mainstr...

https://www.amazon.com/Kellogg-Branding-Marketing-Faculty-Ma...

https://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer-Com...

https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Advertising-Man-David-Ogi...

And, of course:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=vaynerchuk

There are no magic pills though. The best thing is to read and learn from a lot of perspectives and then start to navigate the waters you happen to be sailing. No two markets or products are going to be the same. In fact, the same product will require a different based on where it is in the adoption/maturity cycle.

Absolutely agreed, but I think part of what distorts this perspective for tech products is often the influence of VC. If you need to convince investors that you’re lined up for explosive growth, something like “we’re Tinder with branding that captures a different market segment” is probably a less compelling story than “we’re Tinder with an AI gimmick that will crush our competitors, burn their villages, and salt their fields”.

Also, totally unrelated tangent, but I hate the way internet discussion makes us go to absurd lengths to qualify statements as a preemptive defense against pedants. Like, for the purposes of this discussion you’re 100% right that all bottled water is functionally identical, but you still have to couch it in “I’ll generalize” and “most” and “pretty much”. I do it all the time too and it drives me nuts.

To address your unrelated tangent, as a pedant (as I think many techy types are), I personally appreciate the extra effort put in to qualify the statements.

Your "you’re 100% right that all bottled water is functionally identical" makes me bristle.

I only drink tap at home, but I know that bottled water is drawn from very different sources, and certainly some has quite different taste and taste is certainly a function of water </pedantic>

Fortunately you yourself mounted an effective defence against pedantry by qualifying that with "for the purposes of this discussion".

> [...] because I know that bottled water is drawn from very different sources

Errrm, except that's not the case whatsoever.

Citation, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pepsi-say-aquafina-tap-wat...

/pedantry

> Errrm, except that's not the case whatsoever.

It absolutely is often the case.

You have cited one article about Pepsi's bottled water coming from a tap.

That does not make it universally true at all. Bottle water around here is frequently drawn from springs, rivers etc. It is often the cause of bitter arguments about whether the companies are paying enough for it.

Here is another data point for you about Coca Cola's water coming from municipal taps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani

That does not mean it is 'bad' water. The point is that municipal tap water is perfectly fine to drink in most places.

All water, whether bottled or tap, comes from 'springs, rivers etc.', the 'etc' being pumped up ground water in most cases.

I think the marketing differentiation works best when it is driven by factors that are hard to measure and control, but that are perceived as high value, like flavour and style. When buying bottled water, the water is free, you're buying the bottle, the refrigeration, then real-estate & inventory space, and you can compare it on those dimensions, but if you are sensitive to the taste that can override the other factors. With cola it is much much stronger because the taste is more intense and your body is conditioned to link it to the sugar and caffeine hitting the bloodstream which gives you that immediate Pavlovian response. But taking something low-cost and using human psychology to assign a high value is how marketing makes profit. As opposed to the prosaic side of marketing where you're just letting people know you exist.

> but if you are sensitive to the taste that can override the other factors.

I can taste the difference between certain bottled water brands and that really is the number one concern for me. The differences are much less apparent to me with spring water than in the filtered tap water brands like Dasani and Aquafina (who often add salt and other minerals). For spring water brands I try to buy ones that aren't owned by Nestlé but that's not because of the product itself.

Re:Nestlé : Is that because of the "Rotten" episode on bottled water on Netflix?

No, although I might have seen it. Nestlé has a long history of problems from the questionable exploitation of water resources, profiting from child/slave labor, unethically promoting infant formula over breast milk in developing countries, anti-union/labor practices, pushing for the privatization of public water access ("access to water should not be a public right."), promoting deforestation and the destruction of protected land, greenwashing the impact of plastic bottles, and that's not even all of the ethically questionable things they've done. Just as I was looking up the exact quote of from their chairman and then CEO I'm learning for the first time of complaints about their use of (and lies concerning) palm oil and their demand of £3.7m from Ethiopia while they were in the midst of a famine.

They clearly put their own profits over the lives and safety of people. I'm not taking to the streets in protest or starting facebook groups or anything, but where I can get a comparable alternative to their products I'll go out of my way to spend my money there so that I'm not supporting them.

I completely agree and there are definitely variations based on the mineral content of the source. For me, I can't stand arrowhead water because it tastes salty to me. I think a lot of it has to do with how local water supplies shape our concept of the taste of water.

I don't have a strong preference between different brands of water, or between Pepsi and Coke. But that doesn't mean I can't taste the difference. Dasani is almost as distinctive a taste as Coke.

The real spring water isn't clear, it is muddy. They have to filter it just like the drinking water. They add salt and minerals for taste.

I have been told it is better to use tap water with a filter like Zero Water or a reverse osmosis filter on the water pipes.

Spring water I've encountered at the source has always been exceptionally clear. That's sort of the thing about slowly passing through layers and layers of rock - mud doesn't get through.

And around here anything labeled natural mineral water must by law come with nothing added or removed (bar co2). Of course that will differ by region.

Go outside!

What no? Real spring water is clear because it flows and comes from a spring. Thats the whole point!

Imo, engineering types usually think about technical differentiation because they can potentially be good in it. Usually marketing/branding is very expensive and not very accessible for the average bright founder+engineer type.

Porsche and BMW make completely different types of cars compared to Toyota. They are better in different ways with tradeoffs.

Reliability wise? Sure they are not far off.

Not really, not if you are looking at averages; which is what I said in my post. A US $250K fire-breathing Porsche is in a category of it's own.

Interestingly enough, one of my cars is a Toyota GT-86. I actually chose it over a Porsche 911. I could have bought the 911. In fact I visited the dealer and was ready to commit. On my way back home I drove by the Toyota dealership and decided to go take a look. I left with the Gt-86.

Why?

The car was fun to drive. It handles very well (I've taken it to the track). And, here's the clincher: I don't have to worry about it one bit. Cost was not an issue. Yet, when you have an expensive car in a place like Los Angeles, well, one could make an argument it isn't the best idea. I was after a fun-to-drive sports car, not a daily commuter. The GT-86 filled that role just fine at a fraction of the cost. If I trash it at the race track I can buy three more before I spend what the 911 would have cost.

Not a perfect comparison but perhaps an interesting perspective.

Yeah, well, I bought a Porsche for barely more than a third of a GT-86.

How does it make any sense to say "I bought this car rather than that car for all these reasons" as a follow up to saying cars are interchangeable?

X and Y fill the same role is not in any way a claim that X and Y are indistinguishable (except for marketing), especially when you obviously chose one over the other.

After 10 years, you will definately notice a huge difference in reliability between a BMW and a Toyota.

> Cars

I'm far from an enthusiast, but even for me there are cars on the market with engines so weak that I don't like it.

Apart from the engine, there are some nice technological features on modern cars, like parking cameras or even automatic parking.

Then there are hybrid and electrical cars.

> Bottle water

Do you include sparkling water in that? Because they can taste very different.

> Computer monitor

Size. Resolution. Refresh rate. G-sync. Reflective vs matte.

wrt. Cars, there's a whole can of worms which IMHO matters to every car shopper (whether they think they care about it or not): Ergonomics. Every driver may have their own preferences on where important controls (pedals, steering, AC temperature, volume, etc.) should be; every passenger (including the driver) may have preferences on the hip point, seating position, interior material, etc.. In reality these are (rightfully) widely differentiated across models and makes.

People complaining about CVTs is a cliche. On the other hand, I generally like them, and really dislike any transmission that doesn't shift smoothly (although then I bought a car with one for other reasons).

One reason people may think cars are all the same is because auto journalism has atrophied. I think partly because good journalism is unhelpful in selling ads now, and partly because nobody cares about it for making buying decisions now anyway.

I remember when every single review of the Kia Niro said its transmission was atrocious. They don't say that anymore. But I test drove one, and I don't think anything's changed, probably they just are better at avoiding people who might give a bad review.

> How do they differentiate and sell you cars then? Branding, positioning, marketing.

If I'm in the market for a BMW M3, it is because it is a stellar performance car. A Toyota Camry does not fill those roles.

compare it to an AMG

No, but other Toyota models do.

That’s positioning and marketing too since you don’t really need the performance. For 99% of the time you use the car they’re about the same. If only life were all twisties and race tracks, but in reality it’s mostly traffic jams.

I happen to own a Toyota Camry and a BMW 5 series (not M5 or any other specialty model). Even for day-to-day errands, the BMW is a pleasure to drive. There is a lot of feedback and sharp responses from the steering wheel and throttle.

The Camry on the other hand is one of the least pleasing cars to drive. The suspension feels “floaty” and the steering wheel is completely dead. It also feels completely outdated and cheap and the UI is bad.

That's interesting, do you think you would buy a Camry that was as responsive as the BMW - if it were available- and replace your BMW with it?

I think most of car ownership is Signalling personally

It can be but often it’s not, particularly when people are into cars.

Things like handling, the interior quality, noise makes a big difference to some.

Would I replace my BMW with a Toyota if it handled as well, had as good engine, had a better screen and computer system and such a well calibrated gear box - of course. And Lexus IS getting close.

I don't own a BMW for the signaling. I have no one to impress and it is quite an old station-wagon, so not a head turner. My wife doesn't know shit about cars but refuses to drive the Toyota on her longer commutes, because it's not comfortable for her.

So I would prefer a Toyota that handles nice over a BMW, but it would not be a Toyota. Toyota optimizes their cars for reliability and cost whereas BMW optimizes its cars for high performance and comfort. Specifically, their cars, like other German brands, are well suited for safe high-speed cruising on the autobahn, making them incredibly solid driving machines.

yes, the masses just want signalling, that's why individual car models are not given their own model names. car manufacturers are just emphasizing their brands.

But the true enthusiasts don't care much for signalling or Brands but prefer the visual styling and the capabilities of the car.

Believe it or not, some people prefer that floaty feel. For them, it's like the difference between walking on carpet and on concrete. Not everybody desires or appreciates a "sharp response".

Market segmentation at work.

But in commercials 'your' car is always the only one in the world. Whether they are driving mountain roads, seaside highways or city centers, you will never see even a single other car on the road. Talk about misleading advertising.

> If only life were all twisties and race tracks, but in reality it’s mostly traffic jams.

Even if this is the case, you're better off with an econobox daily driver and a second specialy fitted track car with the correct safety equipment (5 point harness, Hans device, roll cage, fire suppression).

Source: I'm an amature race car driver. High performance cars for everyday public road driving is silly and wasteful (both financially and in terms of underutilizing the vehicle).

> Sure, we can point at the extremes and find differences, but I am not talking about that, I am focusing on what the vast majority of consumers look for or need in a car.

You don't really need to look for extremes, though. Even jumping up one brand "level", you see differences in the "details". I (generally) won't buy anything below the Nissan/Toyota/Honda level, and usually the middle range car (eg. Nissan Maxima). At that level, you start to see all the little things that make driving a pleasure; lumbar support, heated steering wheel, etc. You tend not to get those details when you move one level down, and they can make a pretty big difference when it comes to enjoyment.

> below the Nissan/Toyota/Honda level

What is below those brands in your opinion? Hyundai/Kia?

Mitsubishi, Buick, Mini, Chevy, Dodge, etc all fall below the Nissan/Toyota/Honda level in my mind. That doesn't mean all their cars are worse than all of Nissan's cars; it just means my experience tells me that aren't "made as nice" (the details I mentioned).

Eh, all cars meet minimum safety standards and will get you to and from wherever you want to go, but they aren't equivalent. Just like I could probably go to the supermarket and buy any random item from the butchery department and cook it and it would stop me from being hungry for the night but I definitely wouldn't say that food items from the butchery department only differ in "branding, positioning, marketing" though. Likewise those are not the only things that matter in the car market.

While I agree wholeheartedly with your core point, it's worth noting that (for example) not all car manufacturers make 4WD/AWD vehicles. Even fewer make all-electric vehicles. Even fewer make vehicles that are both 4WD/AWD and all-electric. So there's at least some degree of technical differentiation there.

> Today you could pick any vehicle almost blindly and not make a purchasing mistake.

Wrong. Cost of ownership varies wildly across brands, and reliability is still not a given.

Beyond the purchase price, which often sucks people into making poor buying decisions, fuel economy, parts and servicing, complexity, durability, tax, and depreciation all make a huge difference to cost of ownership.

Finance deals are structured to make cars seem affordable, but that's only a part of the TCO.

If you're unwary, it's very easy to overstretch yourself and buy a car that ends up owning you (new or used).

It's way too easy to overspend on a car (almost any new car), that's definately true.

But, I think he meant in terms of car capabilities: features and amenities. They all have decent acceleration, AC, heating, windshield wipers, electric windows, defrosters and hundreds of other features, even on some of the cheapest cars (new cars). car capabilities are far greater than most people will ever use.

While there are few panel manufacturers for monitors/tv's, there are many technical differences between the panels and the software and calibration.

You'd have to be legally blind not to notice the quality difference between my 200$ Philips screen and my 500$ Dell screen.

> Bottle water is another case. I'll generalize and say that most bottled water is pretty much the same...

> Again, marketing. They are selling you an image.

A great example of this is Fiji water.

"Earth's finest water"

It plays on the allure that a product that comes from a "distant land" must be better than local water.

But few will ever ask for research to prove it's better.

I can't believe we are paying for water to be shipped thousands of miles, that likely has minimal benefit beyond what can be sourced locally.

But, that's the power of perception at work.

One category that's missing on the left is "Parents." There's Tinder for parents (Peanut), Birchbox for parents (multiple subscription boxes). It would be interesting to think about what Uber or AirBnB for parents would be.

I couldn't read the article though because I got that absurd uncloseable newsletter subscription screen. That was one of the most user-hostile things I've seen on a website lately.

I found the X in white on white at the top right. Maybe a browser bug, I'm in Firefox.

So Tinder for parents is a terrible idea. (Full disclosure: my wife's a Peanut member. She's been meaning to uninstall it for a while.) Think about the key observations that made Tinder take over the dating space: people are basically superficial and judge who to go out with based on looks alone; people have spare time to flip through photos; people want to be casual and not invest too much in a date before getting to know them. These are the exact opposite qualities that you want in a mom-friend. When you're a new mom you're probably not looking your best, and putting up a profile picture isn't high on your list of things to do. You don't give a shit what your mom friends look like, and once you're reading through text it's more like "Facebook for moms". You have very little free time to swipe through profiles, and when you do, you want your mom-friend-relationships to count.

There's a lesson there for people who want to phrase their startup idea as "X for Y". You should ask how similar Y is to the userbase that originally made X popular, and whether you are capturing the qualities they have in common or just randomly cargo-culting a successful product. "Flickr for video" works because a photo-viewing community and video-viewing community are substantially similar: they both have similar casual interactions around shared multimedia, and they both benefit heavily from recommendations, discovery mechanisms, and social sharing. Similarly, "Google for China" works because people in China have information needs too yet actual Google has an antagonistic relationship with the CCP. "Uber for laundry" and "Uber for housecleaning" are both terrible ideas because Uber's value proposition is that you can get transportation on-demand and it can be done by unskilled people as long as they get you safely to your final destination, while both housecleaning and laundry are stuff you do once a week, on a planned basis, and you really want to trust the people who are doing it. "Uber for grocery delivery" (Instacart/UberEats/DoorDash/Postmates) is a decent idea, though, because grocery delivery is also something you want on-demand, do regularly, and can be done by basically anyone.

me being stupid but I actually thought flickr for video would fail because video takes more work than photos to create and because it takes more time to view them. clearly I was wrong

YouTube's genius was to realize that that was no longer the case. They've said in interviews that a lot of the impetus to create the product was to realize that tools like cell-phone video and iMovie meant that video would rapidly become a lot cheaper to produce, and that meant there'd be a market for video-sharing. Cell-phone video is also what took the average duration of a video down from 60min 8mm cassettes to 2-3min digital clips, which are the perfect size for a webpage view.

The part that gets me with video is the upload time. Do people just have faster connections than me, or is the secret to create a phone app that restricts the files to greatly reduced resolutions? Seems like flickr for video would require greater bandwidth or time requirements, but I might simply be clueless.

Mobile data has been fast enough for many years now, depending where you live.

My 2 year old phone has 20Mbit/s upload and 79Mbit/s download on a good day. I don't upload videos, but if I did I expect that's fast enough in the background.

The phone upload is way faster than my "fiber" connection at home was, when I still had one.

Oh yes, I agree, Peanut is terrible. I recently moved to a new area and left all my mom friends behind, so I was desperate for a way to find new ones, but it's useless. There needs to be an OK Cupid for moms.

I found the best thing about Tinder when I used it was that by stripping down information and interaction to the bare minimum, it gets people face-to-face quickly with few established expectations, which is the best way to get to know anybody. There is so much about a person you can't learn through a web site or an app, and conventional dating sites worked very hard at getting you to invest a lot of time and work into interactions that only gave you a false sense of knowing someone. With Tinder you just showed up thinking literally only "I have seen a couple of okay pictures of this person and they thought my pictures and two lines of text seemed acceptable as well" which really set expectations appropriately and let you schedule a lot of dates without feeling disappointed about the outcome.

I can see that making a lot of sense for parents. The last thing they need is another high-pressure, high-judgment thing in their lives. Much better to meet someone and feel like it's no big deal if something doesn't click on either side. At least that sounds plausible to me.

It doesn't work with the reality of being a parent. There's no such thing as low-stress, low-commitment way of meeting people when you have an infant or toddler. At the very least, you need to arrange for a spouse to take the kid or deal with their retinue (car seat, stroller or baby carrier, snacks, water, milk, bib, baby wipes, and diaper). At worst, you need to arrange for a sitter, schedule everything, communicate all the baby's needs to the sitter, and be available in case anything goes wrong.

The closest to a low-stress outing for parents is "I'm going to be at this playground in this park for an hour on Saturday morning, and whoever wants to join me is welcome to come." You're at a playground anyway, so if nobody shows up it's an ordinary Saturday morning with the kid. It's time-boxed so you can often get away without the snack/milk/diaper/mealtime accouterments. Scheduling is what you'd have to do anyway, and similar to what other parents have to do. This is how my wife actually meets and hangs out with most of her mom friends. They're usually organized over Facebook though; there's no need for a separate app for it.

Facebook is the Excel of social. It's the bare minimum that everyone uses, can be used as an MVP for any community, but can be beaten in a specific niche by a specific app.

> The closest to a low-stress outing for parents is "I'm going to be at this playground in this park for an hour on Saturday morning, and whoever wants to join me is welcome to come."

That's perfect. I don't think the perspective is as different as maybe I made it seem. On Tinder I always met people for a drink someplace where I knew I liked the drinks, or that I was curious to try anyway. If the person was a dud or a no-show, at least I didn't invest much effort and got something out of it anyway.

Another way of putting it that might resonate better is that finding someone you click with is an intrinsically low-yield process. At first glance, it seems smarter to try to improve the yield (% of good matches) rather than volume (sheer number of people you meet), but services that try to do that don't accomplish much if anything. At best, they produce small increases in yield while increasing your time investment and/or emotional investment significantly. I don't know if that describes your situation, but if it does, it might turn out that the best strategy is to accept that the yield will be low and optimize to make high volume as painless (logistically and emotionally) as possible. The equivalent of Tinder would be an app that provides you with a steady stream of new people to invite to the park. If they're not your next BFF, or your kids don't get along, or even if they're bad people, bad parents? Well, that's the kind of person you have to be prepared to encounter when you go to the park anyway, so no biggie.

I have a different perspective as an immigrant and parent of a toddler: Americans make it a lot harder than it needs to be. My friends in Europe do all kind of things with their little kids, constantly meet friends... Americans have a LOT of excuses but at the core they just don't prioritize social life above other considerations.

It's KidzJet (http://www.kidzjet.com/). They take your kids to after-school activities.

Some say that's how they got the idea for MongoDB:

  Snapchat for Databases

Do I have any of these "realms" wrong? It seems the best startup idea would be one that adds a new "realm" rather than rinses and repeats for another direct object.

Uber for = simplify a process that involves transporting or delivering something somewhere

Tinder for = rate/advertise/connect some product nearby

Birchbox for = periodically refill a perishable or consumable

Airbnb for = locate and book some experience or resource

I think you are trying to define a taxonomy of such services based on the nominal/advertised proposition to end consumers.

I'm not sure that's the right way to quantify the startups themselves, as the business case is sometimes only tangentially related to said proposition.

Tinder for heroin (or maybe Birchbox?) and airbnb for used syringes

> airbnb for used syringes

So just regular airbnb?

I mean the way you make oodles money is taking market share (Uber) or creating new markets (AWS). Both are valid strategies - either take someone else’s customers or create a new way for people to spend money.

Uber for X can also mean “connect the user with independent contractors, or at least people we insist are independent contractors so we can pay less taxes and push the costs for things like insurance, consumables, and equipment maintenance onto them”.

By "taken" do they maybe mean "validated"?

Ideas are executed not "owned". The proof is in the doing.

this. While it's an interesting article and thought experiment, I don't think anyone should be discouraged from trying to build the next ride-hailing, dating, or couch-surfing platform simply because others have already found success in it. Competition makes the world spin, and in the grand scheme of things, we're only just beginning.

I think when you make the world's first couch-surfing app you can plausibly tell your self that you are changing the world. The world goes from not having couch-surfing apps to having one.

Creating a second couch-surfing app with the idea of out-marketing the first doesn't inspire the same sense of purpose.

Innovation usually happens in small increments. Uber/Lyft/x/y/z ride hailing app, airbnb/vrbo/booking, tinder/bumble/match/pof/bagel/hinge/x/y/z dating app, friendster/myspace/facebook/twitter/pinterest/imgur/giphy/justin.tv/twitch/reddit/hackernews/discord/beam/dlive/slack/x/y/z social app, they're all just incremental. I agree it'd be foolish to try and out-compete or out-spend a goliath, but I'm saying that you can still be competitive in other ways. Build something people enjoy, start there.

Reading the article and trying to think of different startup ideas. Gets a non-closable (AFAIK) modal that covers the whole screen force you to go back. Maybe a startup idea that helps entrepreneurs grow without adapting to bad UX behaviour is a great idea that needs attention

yeah, I didn't actually read the entire article because of this.

"Airbnb for Gamers" according to the infographic isn't taken. Any potential there? Letting people rent out their physical gaming rigs to other people in the area, in their homes. Seems like it'd be pretty easy to set up.

I could see it be kind of like gaming cafe's in Asia, except you'd be renting a rig in somebody's actual home. I don't know if there'd be any market for this, but it seems like it wouldn't take to much to whip up and to a trial run in a city.

Nobody wants their hands to touch someone else's booger and cheeto dust coated peripherals, or vice-versa. There have been some times recently where I'd have paid money (but not much) to test drive computer hardware before buying it, but to some extent you can do that by purchasing from places with a liberal return policy.

Speaking of test drive, I'm in the market for a car and would love to be able to actually test drive some of the contenders without having pushy sales people all over me and in my voicemail for the next 2 months. Opportunity?

Google Voice number for car dealerships.

Turo to try cars out for a few days. The owner would probably be happy to tell you what they do or don't like as well - and perhaps sell it to you if they were looking for something else.

Turo if you could search by car type without having to specify date ranges maybe?

I suspect that, at least in places with decent internet, something like ShadowPC negates the need for such a service. I rent a top of the line gaming PC for ~$25/month, and run my games in the cloud.

With what I used to spend keeping a gaming rig upgraded, it doesn't even make sense not to rent something that's always going to be state of the art.

Can't really play FPS or RTS on the cloud, though

EDIT: I'll be damned, according to reddit you can even do CSGO on one of these beasts. I guess that solves what I'm buying myself for Christmas

You'd be surprised. I even connect from an Oculus Quest and stream VR over wifi without noticeable lag.

I was on an early pilot for Google Stadia and could play Assasin’s Creed Oddyssey smoothly on a high speed internet connection.

Odyssey isn't even responsive on a local gaming pc, your character moves like it's behind 50ms of latency in any case

The cheapest I see is 25 dollars a month billed annually :(

Ah, I just checked, and I have some referral credit that gives me a discount. Sorry to misadvertise the price!

First time hearing about Shadow. Their site doesn't mention anything about usage limits, so it sounds a bit too good to be true. Do they have any usage limits in practice?

Not that I've experienced or heard about. My household puts about a terrabyte of bandwidth through Shadow per month, and we haven't had any issues.

Maybe not an opportunity for consoles per se (see cheeto comment), but maybe an opportunity for renting games from your neighbors. Heck, I could see this being extended online in quite a unique way. Cheaper renting some movie or game from someone who already owns it...

Except that nobody owns games or movies anymore. I suspect that letting someone log on to my Steam account would potentially be grounds for a banning, and losing whatever investment I have in the platform.

It would have to be a disruptive model for sure...

I heard there's quite a market still: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA

Redbox is a thing. Not for renting out PC games, but there is a case for renting out physical console games. A large part of GameStop’s business model is retrading second hand games.

AFAIK those are dying. DLC's killing them. You buy (or rent) the disk, you only get like half the game. The rest can't be resold. Consequently, second-hand prices for disks seem to be dropping quite a bit, outside certain categories where that's less of an issue (Nintendo, kinda, and certain genres that still aren't that heavy on DLC like JRPGs). The dropping prices might but OK but with digital stores competing, and providing pretty good prices to anyone willing to wait for a sale, volume (both coming in, and being sold) is surely going down too, at least relative to total market size if not absolutely (and I suspect it's dropping absolutely, too).

Gamestop & friends seem to be muddling along through inertia, the larger-than-it-was but still-small retro gaming market (less Gamestop, they don't carry stuff that old), and selling non-game materials. And new games that come with DLC tickets and such. Not so much used sales or rentals (remember renting games from Blockbuster?)

Some local arcade/pinball operators will rent out their games, but there's no easy to use service for that. But I don't think high-cost/high-touch rentals like that lend themselves to cheap/scaleable apps.

Cloud gaming is coming, soon it'd be what's the point.

Blockbuster use to rent consoles. But in general the market for that sort of service is capped by the relatively low cost of said consoles. Plus you have the problem of everything being tied to an account these days.

Maybe on the PC side you could have a guy loaning out his rig with his monster Steam library and VR setup. On a small scale this might be a modest success, but it's hard to see it ever becoming the next Uber/AirBNB.

There's an app called Rainway for doing streaming from a gaming PC you own to a laptop, phone, tablet.

So you could create a service allowing people to rent out their PCs remotely. Sort of Airbnb for Stadia.

There would probably be licensing issues, but I'm not sure how that currently works for gaming cafes.

People on Fat Llama in the UK rent their gaming rigs

https://fatllama.com/

I started scrolling around, and then an unclosable "subscribe to my newsletter" blocked the entire page.

WTF???

No, I don't want to subscribe to your newsletter. Furthermore, forcing me to subscribe to your newsletter just to read a silly post on your website is a jerk move.

Exactly, that's how I come back here and leave this comment.

"[op] is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm"

It's also an odd move. If you have that level of credential, then you definitely don't want to be doing that!

I fill out undismissable popups as abuse@theirdomain.com. I'm sure their email support team doesn't want to miss out on the incredible rewards.

Tinder for bodily fluids is just tinder.

This gives strong flashbacks to the dot com boom and bust. Folks were going through ISO codes looking for new B2B marketplaces to launch.

Start with an end user need.

http://itsthisforthat.com (2010)

tinder for weed. somebody did tinder for weed. that's got to be the most young californian thing ever.

I had an idea kind of similar to that. Call it Herb Grind(e)r. I don't use weed myself, and I'm married, so I don't know how much need there is.

I actually think something more like Meetup for weed users would be kind of cool, though. Find fun activities to do with herb friendly people.(Disc golf, anyone?)

This idea needs to be incorporated into https://thisstartupdoesnotexist.com/

Tinder for laundry seems like good, clean fun.

F annoying pop-over after X seconds. I will not give you my email.

It would be neat to see a more in-depth analysis on the success of these X for Y startups vs non.

A big reason for X for Y, besides simplicity of explanation is...

X is usually a novel NEW process -- or way of doing things -- that either became only recently possible , or was recently demonstrated as successful.

Suddenly it becomes clear that this NOVEL new process can be applied in other areas.

Uber and AirBnB opened up efficient sharing of expensive resources that were underutilized prior.

Now, the natural next step is:

"What other expensive resources are underutilized?"

Boats? Commercial retail or wharehouse space? Tractors and heavy equipment?

So, in the early stages of rolling out a newly realized novel process, it seems impossible that the process should not expand to a number of similar problems.

Until the low hanging fruit is all gathered.

Uber for Y, for example, seems to be only in its VERY EARLY stages.

No doubt there are MANY Y's out there to roll out the Uber model to.

http://archive.is/7q806

I am always questioning why startup idea have to be unique ? Let's say you sell "books" we all know who's biggest.. but they idea was not definitely not unique.

My opinion service quality for customer matters more than uniqueness..

I think the reason this sort of thinking works is that it's an effective way to perform exhaustive search in idea space where metrics may be hard to define, based on combinatorics. A very early example of such an approach was Ramon Llull's Ars Magna (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull#Llull's_Art_(Ars_M...).

Airbnb for bathrooms, you can use it to allow desperate strangers to pay you to use your toilet. Preferably while you're not home. We'll call it Airpnp.

AirPnD

20000 startup ideas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21112345

Seems people found this pretty funny when it was posted

>> Document software defects, using hand and horn signals.

Those "ideas" are just occupations, as categorized by the US federal government, called "Standard Occupational Classification System".

I'm looking forward to seeing the first startup in the Uber for Beards space.

My startup business - GoldenEgg

https://www.thegoldenegg.in/services/address-change/

the list is questionable. I was very hopeful to see if there was a tinder for gamers (say, to find people to play coop games) but there's some sort of tinder inspired incremental game in that spot, so I wonder how much is it really curated and how much is a proxy to a Google 'feeling lucky' search

Can we all just please agree that Tinder for Kids should not exist? Please?

Uber for underwear? I’m having trouble imagining some of those open spots.

this post was obviously just satire. but, just so we're clear, Paul graham's article on this concept unequivocally says this is NOT how you build a start up.

It's not about is it taken it's who can do it better

"Plaid for Bitcoin"

Besides the "X for Y" approach, I find it laughable that every time someone says they are doing just "X" that the usual Bay Area response is "How are you differentiating from your competitors?"

Go ask how UPS differentiates themselves from FedEx. Or how Shell differentiates themselves from Chevron. In reality, while product differentiation is good, unless there already exists a monopoly that has eaten every inch of the market, the market is probably big enough to fit multiple nearly identical products at the same time and still have them all profitable.

> the market is probably big enough to fit multiple nearly identical products at the same time and still have them all profitable.

Agreed, but VCs don't need you to build a profitable company, they need you to build a billion dollar company, in order to return their fund.

This "How are you going to win your market?" is driven by venture capitalism. Most startups in the Bay Area are VC-backed.

Chevron, Shell, UPS, and FedEx are all billion dollar companies. They succeeded not because of differentiating product, but because the market is so big that it's hard for a single company to dominate it.

So you think if you pick a big enough market, then building a billion dollar company with no product differentiation will be trivial?

Not trivial, but very possible with a lot of hard work.

Let's say you want to start a new grocery store chain and compete with Safeway. Differentiating your product (e.g. Trader Joe's) is one way, but another way is to just build new grocery stores where people want them and they don't already exist.

All of these companies were started between 50 and 150 years ago, when there was much less competition. These days you need a better story for how you're going to win a market and keep it.

While that's true that there were fewer people starting businesses, there were also proportionally fewer consumers in the world. I'm not sure things were any easier 50-150 years ago in that respect.

IMO only VCs want a bullsh!t "story". The rest of the world just wants X for $C and doesn't have access to it yet because the competitors aren't big enough. Brand loyalty, network effects, and cost of switching applies to some certain markets, but also doesn't apply to a lot of markets.

Nobody reads the story behind the founding of Taco Bell or Del Taco. They just get hungry, see the sign, and eat. Billion dollar business right there.

I think VCs want a good story because they've been burned too many times by companies that sound like they could be big, but then fail because:

– not enough product differentiation

– not a large enough market

– not defensible enough

Again, Taco Bell / Del Taco were both started 50+ years ago, and have nothing to do with starting a company in today's internet age.

Maybe but here on the Internet there seems to be one search engine which rakes in most of the money, one social network where most people have accounts, one electronic toy maker which sits on top of a mountain on cash. Second prize is a set of steak knives.

And yet here I am using Duckduckgo and twitter on firefox...

Is that top search engine Baidu? Yandex? Google? Depends on who and where you ask.

Yandex has about ~1.5% revenues of Google. Baidu ~11%. It's not even a contest which rakes in the most money.

If I had a company that made even 0.1% of Google, I'd probably start each day running around the room in feats of joy and delight.

Seriously, if I could pay talented people many hundreds of thousands of dollars, have a nice office, happy customers, a decent product, and only make a paltry 136 million a year, where do I sign up?!

You're getting away from the tread though. At 0.1% you're not FedEx to Google's UPS.

And if you're running a similar service, say a speciality search engine, Google might come after you at a moment's notice.

I see (at the time of this post) a regional person and a techno-geek respond to your comment, trying to disqualify it as not being universal (sorry globalist techno-geeks!), even though it is, measured by global magnitude.

But I am baffled by the reference to the toy maker? Who is that? Unless you mean Apple?

Yes, Apple.

Google, Facebook and Apple are all increasingly hated though, and can't figure out new ways to make money. The time may be coming where taking a shot at their profitable businesses becomes a possibility.

Google grew its revenue by 23% from 2017 to 2018. Sure, it's not a startup any more but still I wish I couldn't figure out new ways to make money like that.

They're hated because they make a lot of money and you don't have a choice about using them. Companies in competitive markets that piss off their customers don't end up hated; rather, people just don't patronize them, and they go out of business. To be hated requires an inability to simply ignore your existence.

If you look at institutions in terms of their favorability ratings, it's basically an inverse list of the level of competition they face. At the top you usually have things like beloved local restaurants, day cares, variety stores, computer games, etc. where if they weren't extremely good, you'd just go somewhere else. At the bottom you have the U.S. Government, the one institution that nobody in the world can escape. Near the bottom are monopolies with heavy network effects like Facebook and Comcast.

I want to take exception with your neat generalization.

The cable company, at least where I live, (Spectrum) is definitely worse than the government. They have stores, that are like the DMV, but the queue to be waited on is longer - the DMV is significantly more parallelized. And the DMV isn't designed like an Apple store, because people that work for the government aren't quite as shameless about being a monopoly.

When it comes to the feds the IRS has infinitely better customer service than Google (literally, infinitely) and unlike the cable company, when they owe you money, they pay you interest.

I think that's a reasonable question to ask. Most startups do have some way to differentiate themselves from their competitors, and if you ask them what it is, that's often the fastest way of understanding what they value and what their company is like.

I am guessing that you find this question annoying because you have to answer it a gazillion times for Robby. ;-) https://robby.io/ But to me I am pretty interested to hear your answer, of how do you differentiate from all the other delivery robots out there. And if the answer really is "well there's several that are just like us but I think we can all be winners", that's an interesting answer too.

> how UPS differentiates themselves from FedEx.

Wikipedia will tell you that UPS started as a parcel delivery service in the early 20th century. Naturally it was ground based and evolved that way.

FedEx was founded in the 70s as a technology driven startup with the idea of using planes for delivery.

FedEx was UPS for Express Deliveries. X for Y.

Let's try it another way, "there can be more than one sandwich shop"

But not more than one bar per 10,200 residents in Salt Lake City!

Sandwich shops differentiate themselves from each other considerably though, so I'm not sure this is a good analogy.

Ok cool, more than one Patel owned motel, more than one Cambodian owned donut shop in the LA basin...

The point is that the existence of something isn't a valid reason to not do it. Sometimes not even an excuse to not do it in a nearly identical way.

If someone wants to make say a tetris clone, I say go ahead, make the best one you can make. Take pride and joy in your accomplishments. I hope it will be great.

YACC was named "yet another compiler compiler" because in the 1970s, there were plenty of others around and it was yet another one. But it was well built, well designed, and done anyway. It survived, the others didn't.

You have an idea, others are doing it? So what? Do it.

The "Zero to One" wisdom is that lots of competition means low margins for the business. It's very difficult to afford much more than minimum wages for your sandwich shop employees. That's part of why you don't see a lot of venture-funded restaurants.

Actually, in the UK at least there are VC firms which invest solely in retail and food businesses. Usually they take an already existing restaurant with a single location and turn it into a chain. It is possible to create scalable value in the retail and restaurant businesses, mainly due to the power of brand recognition.

Creating a recognizable brand means answering the question about differentiation, though.

People know how KFC is different from McDonalds is different from Pizza Hut is different from Chipotle. Hell, most of the time they even know how Burger King is different from McDonalds (white meat chicken tenders and more meat in the burgers), how In'N'Out is different from McD's (simple menu, Thousand Island dressing, onion rings), and how Chick'Fil'A is different from KFC (sandwiches over buckets; Chick'Fil'A sauce; lighter frying). The extent to which these are viable as VC-backed chains is exactly the extent to which they can be differentiated in customer's minds.

> and how Chick'Fil'A is different from KFC (sandwiches over buckets; Chick'Fil'A sauce; lighter frying)

Assuming they've eaten at Chick'Fil'A in the past decade, of course. Most people I know boycott it because of its horrendous anti-LGBT politics. (To wit: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/uganda-murder-gay-chick-fi...)

Most people I know frequent it for that exact same reason! :P

I'm sorry

>how In'N'Out is different from McD's (simple menu, Thousand Island dressing, onion rings)

Is there a joke in here I'm missing? I don't associate Onion rings with McDonald's at all, and In'N'Out doesn't even have them.

Oh, I was referring to how In'n'Out will slice a whole onion (in concentric rings, still attached) and put that on your burger, while McD's uses diced onions sprinkled over the top. Used an unfortunate phrase to describe it, because onion rings are also a real side dish (which I don't associate with any fast food joints - more like clam shacks and stuff). Maybe that makes it a bad example anyway, if nobody knows what I'm talking about.

LA has quite a large number of them. The restaurant startup space is quite big these days.

Regardless, the optics of venture funding changes this analysis because now we're looking at ROI and not just say, creating successful enterprises that create wealth and value.

The latter is the thing of interest to me. In technology we've focused too much on the former. A say, twenty person software company where everyone is paid well and the customers like the product is a worthy, fine goal. $5,000,000,000 MRR is fine as well, but the vegas-style way people think of tech shouldn't be the only road out there.

Obviously.

With sandwich shops, location is a key differentiator. We are X for Y, where X is the sandwich shop and Y is specific location.

Sandwich shops is also a highly competitive market. As such, when you look at a snapshot in time it seems like there is diversity without strong differentiation. However, in most cases, if you look at it historically you’ll see that differentiation at inception was required.

Fun note - the largest sandwich shop of all started growth when it became “a commercial real-estate company for franchised sandwich shops”.

Ok, more explicitly then:

This grab for the #1 slot analysis robs the richness of expression that businesses provide.

The trophy model implicates that everyone but a single group walks away losers. It's not a necessary model or, in my opinion, a healthy encouraging analysis. We are the most social species to ever exist, something that requires ruthless cutthroat individualistic competition leaves out the vast majority of humans who aren't like that.

In some markers, the players try to stomp on each other's heads acting like tyrants while in others they coexist peacefully. Not everyone is always trying to be a dick.

And how do you decide which sandwich shop to go to when you want a sandwich? You've just answered the question "how does a sandwich shop differentiate itself?"

In my case, usually whichever one is closest. If I want good food I wouldn't be going for a sandwich.

Even in the case of good food, it's usually the closest one that meets a certain bar. You could serve identical food as a distant, good restaurant and I would go to yours if you were closer. You don't need to differentiate, especially if you are serving a standard, authentic rendition of some ethnic dish.

Generally speaking, I would say the quality of the bread or the cookies. But I don't really go looking for a generic sandwich (like a ham or turkey sub) most of the time. Instead, I go to a place that might be good, find one thing that they do well, that probably doesn't have a direct competitor, and order it over and over again until I'm tired of it. Or alternate with whatever another place does best.

It's my belief that almost all worthwhile restaurants only have one or two things that they do particularly well, so having a huge menu is a negative.

I don’t think the answer is constant.

Taste, value for money, what I feel like, distance, change and my feelings about healthy eating that day. The shop can influence taste, value for money and change by specials

You wouldn't want to invest in a sandwich shop, and the reason is precisely why investors ask about differentiation.

Knowing Subway's market cap now, would you invest in them as an angel investor? You'd be a billionaire right now.

They didn't become big by differentiating product. Their sandwiches aren't that special. They became big by coming into existence where people wanted sandwiches.

See the sibling thread about VC-funded branded chains:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465969

They absolutely did become big by differentiating product. There's a Jersey Mike's and an Arby's near my home, as well as a Subway about a mile away. The former two chains came into existence right around the same time (and slightly before) Subway did. They struggle for business, both nationwide and locally. It wouldn't surprise me if most readers of this comment haven't heard of them, while most everyone has heard of Subway. That's despite having a similar product (sandwiches) and similar locations to Subway.

What they're missing is the brand. Subway pushed heavily on being a healthy, quick-service chain with good selection in the late 90s, right as America was waking up to the virtues of healthy food and wanting something different from burgers. (They'd actually been around since the 60s, but I never heard about them until the early 2000s.) Nobody buys a Subway for the sandwich; they buy a subway because they want something quick & easy, from a known source, and don't feel like getting a burger. There are plenty of other sandwich shops that sell sandwiches cheaper, oftentimes with better ingredients (i.e. not 49% soy protein in their chicken), but you'll never have heard of them, and most close up in a few years. Invest in them and you go broke.

"What they're missing is the brand."

I have to believe you're wrong, given how awful Subway is compared to every other sub place, particularly Jersey Mikes, Jimmy Johns, Potbelly, DiBellas, even Firehouse Subs. Without doing in depth research, the differentiator has to be their franchising model.

No, Subway's biggest differentiator was and continues to be the low cost of building one, compared to a McDonalds. You can build out a Subway for $200,000 in some cases compared to $1-2 million for a McDonalds. That's why they're the most popular franchise restaurant.

That’s from the sellers point of view and doesn’t translate into consumer demand to keep the ventures profitable and have a competitive ROI.

A 100 cheese and tomato sandwich shops are even cheaper and would probably go broke or a paper airplane franchise ...etc I suppose there is a relationship between profits and the establishment cost however customer demand is king

It could be related - a low franchise cost means a Subway on every corner (there're 3 within a 5 minute driving radius of my home), which increases the chain's brand recognition. Same strategy that Starbucks uses, opening a store on every corner, even to the point where they cannibalize each others' sales. Familiarity has an advertising benefit all on its own.

A more direct question would be "Why should a potential customer choose you over $established_competitor_x?"

If your best answer is "We are adding diversity to the marketplace", then you're probably doomed. If you aren't better in some way (faster, cheaper, better tech, etc...) then people are going to naturally gravitate towards the incumbent who has already shown some staying power and has infrastructure in place that you do not.

>If your best answer is "We are adding diversity to the marketplace", then you're probably doomed. If you aren't better in some way (faster, cheaper, better tech, etc...)

We have seen it over and over in tech though...some small time founder starts something and then a VC back startup eats their lunch and takes the market (of course rewriting history along the way to say they invented/disrupted the market).

The sad truth is the answer to why a customer will choose us over established competitor is because...VC capital/your money. We will use VC capital/your money to out spend/out market our competitor because they can only grow as fast as their revenue, whereas we can artificially grow using your VC money, even to the point we can subsidize the price of our widget which the established competitor can't, we will grow our market share, even if at a loss because at any time we can "flip the switch and its all profit."

That's a completely valid reason. If the competition is underserving the market and you think you can outgrow them because you have an aggressive growth plan then that's something.

Not always true. Sometimes customers hate the vendor, but there is no viable alternative.

Just remove a couple pain points and you can create a shift.

Often enough though, people are unfamiliar with both your brands. So they're going to choose the person with better marketing. Sometimes marketing IS the difference, and engineers hate to hear that.

And buyers can be shrewd in their calculation.

I founded a company that, in the 1990s, was implementing a Visa/Mastercard/(Amex, IBM, HP, Sun, RSA, Netscape) backed "Standard" for credit card payments. IBM had "invented" the spec's predecessor in Zurich Switzerland.

We were in Austin, Texas. Tiny, but scrappy. Our first customer was the largest card payment processor in Zurich Switzerland (blocks away from that IBM R&D lab!) and they were an IBM shop.

Somehow, we beat IBM in our toe-to-toe attempt to sell into that account. (Less marketing, and more sales "grit"). I asked their project leader later - "Why?". He said that at the end of the day, they knew that they were one of 100 IBM banking customers. And that they were our "first". When deploying "new" technology, they wanted a vendor that will kill themselves trying before they let the customer fail. They knew, simply, that we wanted, that we needed, their success more than IBM did...

How do you justify Coke vs Pepsi with this logic?

I just tell people that my neighborhood also has multiple grocery stores

But I’m guessing you probably tend to favor one for your regular shopping because it has characteristics you like better than the others.

This is exactly the point.

I tend to avoid Kroger brands because I do not like that most of their sale prices are dictated by having a Kroger Card. I'm not particularly price conscientious and find Kroger has a great selection and quality. I simply choose elsewhere when I can.

> I tend to avoid Kroger brands because I do not like that most of their sale prices are dictated by having a Kroger Card.

Aren't most grocery chains like this?

Not in my area. Most of them only offer a discount on gas with their grocery card.

Not really. The grocery chain I shop at the most doesn't even have a loyalty card. The other has one but it's a fairly nominal discount only on house-branded items. But there are certainly chains that require a card to get routine large discounts. (Safeway for example.)

yes like proximity or exposed to first.

Are they all exactly the same? Target? Safeway? Food4Less? Do you see any differentiation between these? Would it be a reasonable assumption that conversations like, "I like to go to Target over Safeway because..." happens?

How Lyft differentiates from Uber might be more on the nose.

As far as winning the market goes, actual product differentiation doesn't matter that much. In their particular market it almost all boils down to how much the rides cost. I usually just open both apps and pick the cheaper one.

And I’m honestly not sure what the answer is other than not carrying with it quite the same amount of negative baggage that Uber does. They were differentiated but it turns out most people don’t want to fist bump their taxi driver.

Lyft was “Uber but in a normal persons car and much cheaper” until Uber created their cheap option

All the mainstream ride sharing platforms seem to have more or less gravitated towards the same basic offering(s)--which is, perhaps not entirely surprisingly, essentially an app-enabled taxi.

When Lyft first started, there was no set price for rides... you would pay what you wanted. It was very strange, I didn't like it.

I only started using Lyft when they transformed themselves into a clone of Uber. (Not that I use either all that much.) I found the whole fist-bump, pink mustache, weird pricing, etc. completely off-putting.

By not starting #metoo.

Currently they seem to be the "we aren't those jerks" sort of alternative to a competitor with a bad reputation. Just like how Uber gained over Taxis - and ironically Lyft to do the same to them over assorted shadiness and scandals.

Of course to sustain that effect they not to gain a bad reputation.

You need to be able to answer that. The answer can be no, and saying why will only help demonstrate your understanding of your business and the market.

I think the differentiation factor is relevant to venture capitalists more than end users. Having an equity stake in a new business is a risky proposition. A unique market position, or perhaps an idea that is patentable, provides the prospect of risk mitigation - the idea itself may be able to be liquidated if the business fails. There's also the upside of being the only player in a given market.

Differentiation isn't just about the product. Marketing used to be defined as: product, price, place and promotion.

Many competitors compete and differentiate on just the latter three.

Your examples are all big companies, but the question is being asked about startups. That's a category error.

One thing I've learned dealing with other businesses in my company is that businesses don't necessarily need to be good. Selling to the public I'm sure you need to good but it seems to matter far less when you sell to other businesses. Just be able to hit their price point. Their employees could complain for years about it before moving on

It depends on your vertical. Some online centric verticals are winner takes all and rely on a marketplace critical mass, while others have a local presence element and can support near identical competitors. You can’t have too many Uber or Lyft platforms per city (critical mass) but you definitely can have a lot of coffee shops.

I searched a startup name in a seperate tab, came back and had an inescapable subscribe screen.

If your going to attempt to hold the rest of the article hostage pending a subscription to your newsletter, at least let me get interested first. This is both hostile and ineffective- and unsurprisingly is the most amusing part of the website

Firefox is working on a JS popup blocker. They're collecting data now, use https://github.com/ehsan/popup-reporter to report sites.

Yes!! It's time for browsers/users to fight back against this madness.

We all blocked pop-ups for a reason: they are obnoxious interruptions that interfere with web browsing.

Unfortunately site designers learned the wrong lesson from, thinking "oh, I guess that means we need to come up with a sneakier way of forcing obnoxious pop-ups on users that don't want them."

I wrote a nonexistent email to escape

Ahhh, good ol' god@heaven.mil

http://archive.is/7q806

I know this isn't an option for everyone, but I've been loving browsing the internet with Javascript off on Safari.

I also have Firefox with Javascript turned on, in case I need to browse a website I trust with Javascript.

This comment sparked my interest and I looked into it, ended up disabling js by default on my browser! Thanks for the tip.

I use Qutebrowser, which has really handy keyboard shortcuts I can use to either temporarily or permanently whitelist sites to run javascript.

Is anyone else offended by the non-dismissable email signup pop-over on this page? Ctrl/Cmd-R refresh allows continuing to read from the same point, but still....

I came to the comments looking for this, and was surprised it was so far down. They are just asking for garbage input...

the popup modal for the newsletter is undismissible and blocks the article completely in the latest safari

popup that keeps me from reading the article unless I give them an email address when I'm half-way through?

No thanks.

That is an extraordinary anti-pattern.

Is there any browser in 2019 that is actually capable of blocking obnoxious pop-ups? It seems like we're losing the arms race.

Fortunately the best part of the article was "above the fold" so I didn't run into that monstrosity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com