Ask HN: Does a startup always need a new idea

Not sure if I am an "expert" on this, but Reddit came out after Digg and sold. MySpace and Facebook came out after Friendster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#History

There are plenty of players out there who come out after others do. I have a friend who runs a successful rebate shopping side that launched well after others did.

They all seemed to have some kind of advantage or find some kind of niche when others were doing well. Location may be your advantage, or ease of use, etc. Good luck!

Definitely not. Google is the canonical example of a startup entering a crowded market and just doing it better.

If you're from India, you're probably familiar with http://www.smsgupshup.com/. I don't know too much about them, but my understanding is that they're very similar to twitter, but managed to grab the Indian market by catering specifically to those users' needs. I think I remember reading that sms was a much bigger focus for them because of the availability of net access in India. Sometimes doing it better means doing it better for a specific subset of customers.

The big example: Google & Altavista.

Answer: it depends on the market and that market's dynamics. What are the switching costs? The network effects? In your case, the first is fairly low, but the second may be significant, amongst current users. New users may be easy to attract, if you can get blocks of friends that aren't in the existing services.

As I see it, you can do one of three things:

1. Have a new idea (invent first search engine).

2. Have a new approach to an existing idea (Google).

3. Adapt an existing idea to a new market (Baidu).

So no, a new idea isn't required. In fact, it's not so much the idea that matters as the implementation. No one cares who had the idea first. They care which service is the most useful now.

Also, there is the larger point: If it's fun to work on, and you think you can do it better, then who cares if it exists or what others think. Prove them wrong.

Having an entirely new idea is great, but in reality it comes down to a mix of fulfilling a demand and profitability. You can be as new fangled as you want but if you miss the boat on attracting customers/users or on generating sufficient revenues your startup will have a hard time in the marketplace.

thank you for the answers...other big problem is getting the funding in the initial stage..Our revenue model is location based advertising..but to get that running needs lot of money..but without userbase VC doesn't seem to be interested..So we are planning to launch our service before end of this year and get a reasonable user base in say 6 months and then look for the VC funding to get the ads running on our platform...is that the correct/good approach or if not please suggest your thoughts ..thanks

I don't see any serious need of having a brand new idea for a startup. But yeah surely it is the implementation of the idea that finally matters much.