Solving the problems of early stage me-too product startups | Hacker News Reader

Solving the problems of early stage me-too product startups

venturebeat.com

21 pointsyaj8 comments

Isn't the real solution to avoid "me too" solutions in crowded spaces? If you can't segment or develop a unique appeal to a niche when you are starting out it's not clear how much value you will be able to create as a startup. An established company may launch a "me too" as a part of a brand extension or to have a complete line of products, but I can't think of a good reason for a startup to do so.

I think the author of the article considers segmentation and "unique appeal" as me-too solutions, albeit good examples of them.

So you two are saying the same thing.

That wasn't my intention. As an example look at what SmartSheet has done with SmartSourcing http://www.smartsheet.com/product/smartsourcing they are taking a "me too" on-line spreadsheet and integrating it with Amazon's Turk in a novel and useful way. If it takes off it will be a different service from other on-line spreadsheets (provided they are not copied). I am not affiliated with SmartSheet but was impressed by this idea.

I'm still not sure what your intention is:\

I think the original author would consider smartsheet as a me-too solution(ie. excel, google spreadsheets)--but an innovative one for using Amazon's Turk.

If it's me too what other apps act as a general purpose front-end / aggregator for Mechanical Turk. If it's me too it should be compared in that category, not as an on-line spreadsheet.

> Isn't the real solution to avoid "me too" solutions in crowded spaces?

The "me too" start up usually do provide some added value or a differentiating feature. However, since the big-name, established services are, well, so well known, they tend to identify the service "category". In this situation it's hard to differentiate your startup too much, as that would mean exclusion from the category.

Forward idea

A bit off topic, but while we are on the Back/Forward subject, I am suprised why there is no standard for implementing a "Forward Link" meta tag for website.

For example in HN news there are pages (next page), and so do most websites. Wouldn't it be great if there was a meta tag that specifies what this logical next page is... and pressing the forward button will take you there!

Actually, such a standard exists: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.1.2.

I think Opera is (or was) the only browser to support this.

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