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Comment by bruce511 | Hacker News Reader

Have you seen this model work for others? Have you seen it fail for others?

I ask this not to rain on your parade, but to probe how much of your word "hope" comes into play here.

I'm not sure a compeditor would be "less genuine" than you.

Customer service can be a differentiator, (so at least Google isn't your problem) but good customer service is expensive. AWS provides pretty good customer service.

Relying on brand is likely to hurt rather than help you - you'll be unknown whereas AWS is, well, AWS.

I get that if your target market is Open Source developers, then releasing source is a good thing. Hopefully you remain small enough to fly under the radar.

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BTW, I do have unique selling points including schedule assist for flexible group meetings and booking for external users using AI.

sure, I'm assuming you have a good idea, and are generating something useful. I'm imagining that your code is magnificent :). You mentioned applying to YC, which _suggests_ you're going down the investor/exit (VC?) approach rather than a bootstrap approach.

So, I'm assuming that your goal is to get a lot of users, and gain some market traction, demonstrating both that a market exists, and that people want to pay for this functionality.

So my point is, now that you are successful (to VC levels of success) then you become visible to others - like (but not necessarily limited to) AWS. At that point what stops them just using the code to offer the same service?

Obviously there is room for lots of small companies, providing useful services that customers pay for. If you plan to be small, and niche, then you can make a very successful business. But that business is perhaps better aligned with boot-strapping rather than have VC-style investors.

AWS highly unlikely to copy me. I'm not the same domain as them. They might provide hosted developer tools like search engines but not internal tools for teams. They will think it is chump change until it is not but I will big enought at that point. Who knows.

AWS is not my competition. If it were I wouldn't be in the space, personally.

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