Ask HN: How do you talk to competitors?

2 pointst_a_v_i_s2 comments

Does anyone have any best practices for talking to competitors? My company just launched a new product and a lot of players in this space are reaching out to learn more about what we're building.

I see pros and cons to speaking with competitors.

Pros: shared learnings, potential partnerships.

Cons: blatant copying, stifled market opportunity.

View on HN

I think there is always value in talking to other people if they are open to talk about their things as well.

This would be roughly what I would do:

1. Why do they really want to talk to you. What are they to gain?

2. What is your secret sauce? What's the core IP and core learnings that you are not willing to share because it's at the core of your execution.

3. What are you actually open to talk about? How could you benefit from each other without directly competing? Maybe they target the enterprise market while you target the small and medium business market. You are not really competing in this case.

4. Go into such talks with an open mind but stay cautious. If they don't want to share anything at all don't share much either.

Michael Corleone summed it up, "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com