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Comment by IAmGraydon | Hacker News Reader

Threads like this one always baffle me. You have to think of the competitive landscape like a jungle. All of the creatures in the jungle are looking for food, and some have far more competitive advantages than you. If you find a food source that no one else has happened to stumble upon, would you scream out that you've found it? No. If someone is asking you, it's because they want to know how they can get what you have. Much like the amount of food in the jungle is limited, so is the size of any market.

Don't create competition for yourself. They can go on having no idea how lucrative your little side project is and you can go on reaping the benefits. As soon as you tell someone with more resources that your little side idea is actually turning over large sums of money, you better believe their wheels will be spinning on how to get a piece of it. It's so easy to avoid this, you just have to not run your mouth.

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"Thread like this" are popular and entertaining for a variety of reasons. You assume that they're only about making money, stealing someone else's ideas, etc. but that's not necessarily the case. To me, the interesting bit of these threads is to understand the human thought process behind a successful idea: ie was the founder happy with life or in a bad place, working full time or freelancing, was it an impulsive thought or something carefully planned...

Most businesses here are inspiring to me in the same way that a monkey in the jungle is inspiring to an anteater - it's great hearing how the monkey is doing but if I want to compete I have to cross half the jungle and climb a tree.

Sometimes competition ain't as easy to attract as you might think

Extending this logic, you should never tell anybody anything about anything. Which is clearly not true, nor how humans work.

One simple reason to post: For every potential competitor reading about your project, there are thousands of potential customers.

> One simple reason to post: For every potential competitor reading about your project, there are thousands of potential customers.

If you’re happy with your existing cash flow this point seems less relevant; the better choice would then be to protect your competitive advantage and stay hidden, right?

I’ve come across a number of people who are hesitant to share their idea because they’re afraid someone will “steal” it.

The idea is not the hard part. The hard part is building the software, building the customer base, building the automation processes, and doing all the business-things associated with it.

I’ll grant that if you say “Hey, this thing is actually a marketable product” that you’re reducing the cost of a potential competitor, but really there is so much work to do. Even if you can get a lot of it COTS, there’s still a lot of effort to be put in.

I’m really unsure it works like this. It sounds logical but in practice stealing an idea is hard.

I’d actually love to read a thread about people making 2k per month on a stolen sass idea.

The economy isn't a zero-sum game. Everyone wins in the long-term when we help each other succeed.

Can't really argue that with the massive wealth gap

The ideal version of capitalism with zero barriers to entry isn’t a zero sum game. The actual reality that is our current economy doesn’t reach that ideal and there are definitely situations where groups lose out form the benefit of others

This seems like a reasonable take, but I can tell you with 100% certainty I'm not a threat to any of the devs/entrepreneurs in this thread. For me, it's just fun to see how other people are scratching out a living. My feeling is that not all successful ideas are easily replicable when you consider all the factors that contribute to one's success, so just because someone else managed to pull it off doesn't mean I could.

I suspect a lot of people here are going to get business from other people discovering their products also

Something's making money, it is more than an an idea. it exists, it has found a small corner place in the market. someone paid for the product, not the idea.

These threads attract unique businesses, with a twist. (Almost) None have groundbreaking, earth shattering ideas. They usually have an interesting story to them. It attracts people like me, who just love to immerse myself in such conversations, stories and experiences. Maybe potential customers, if not me, could be someone I talk to.

Secrecy isn't a strong competitive advantage after you're in the market.

Exactly this.

Every once in awhile, there are threads and comments here on HN about the various people who have had their UI, content, data or concepts stolen as well.

Unless you’re a full-time hobbyist or boast a mature project, please be cautious.

The world is significantly larger than you think. Most of the people posting here are from the US, which makes up ~5% of the population.

If your idea is so fragile that anybody else with a similar idea can knock you out of the market, it's probably not very good.

Extending the metaphor, a competitor can be good for business depending upon your strategy. If you're a hyena, you benefit from having lions around because the lions can kill a much larger animal than a pack of hyenas ever could. Maybe someone else on HN can advertise their copy of a product, but all that's doing is growing the target market for the OG product which already has a (small) monopoly.

Competition is often a validation of there being a need for your product.

Evil idea: post lies about finding lots food at location X, then secretly sell tools that help people get to location X.

Oops, forgot rule #1.

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