Ask YC: Are there ideas that are “done to death”? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Are there ideas that are “done to death”?

9 pointspharaohgeek9 comments

I've often had grand epiphanies... Huge, earth-changing, multi-zillion dollar ideas! Only to find out (usually 5 minutes later) that the idea has not only been done already, but it's been done by a couple dozen different companies. More often than not, these companies also include huge companies, such as Facebook or Google, that would be nearly impossible to compete with.

My question is this... Is it true that there are ideas that really are "done to death"? I look at the online dating market. Match, eHarmony, jDate, PoF, etc. have saturated the market and taken up a huge amount of marketshare. At the end of the day, though, they're really all the same. They may target different interests or demographics, but there's really no difference. Is online dating done to death? Should someone even bother getting into that market again?

A more recent example is in messaging apps. Once the Snowden docs went public, it seemed like everybody and their brother put out a "secure" messaging app. Are there too many of them now? Could one really gain any traction in a market that has literally hundreds of messaging apps on the iOS AppStore? I've had an idea for a while on how to increase the security and anonymity of messaging apps. But, with the sheer volume of competitors it almost seems to me like I shouldn't even bother coding it up. Is this an idea that has been "done to death"?

Or, is the whole notion of something being done to death merely a logical fallacy? Is it worth competing? Is there enough money/eyeballs to go around? I'd REALLY be interested in hearing your thoughts on the subject. Having good ideas is really inspiring; but, seeing that there are already a LOT of other people in that space has become really discouraging.

Nothing has been done to death, nor will it ever be. There's been a lot of research that first-movers are almost never the ultimate victors in an industry. Furthermore, being a "victor" (no matter how huge) doesn't last forever. Every company has a rise, decline, and death.

Small companies can always, always disrupt a giant. The reason is that a giant, in order to sustain itself, must cater to everyone. It's impossible to do that well, and they'll always leave niches that are under-served. That's where a small company can come in, dominate that niche, and slowly take over the market. Clayton Christensen has famously researched and written about that process.

That said, ideas are meaningless. No one succeeds because they had a great idea, except maybe the Tim Ferrisses of the world who "bend the rules" and screw people over.

All that matters is execution. You might have an online dating idea, and it might be great, but can you actually execute? Launching a consumer brand costs millions these days because of the high costs of customer acquisition. Do you have that money? Would investors feel confident giving it to you?

Or, if you want to start a B2B company, do you have an unfair advantage that will catapult you over all the other people doing the exact same thing? Do you know lots of people in that industry, or were you yourself one of them, so you understand them particularly well?

Don't get hung up on ideas. No idea is new, and usually if you have an idea that no one has done, it's because it's a terrible idea. Don't be afraid of competition. You don't have any until someone is actually taking your customers away from you, and tiny startups don't tend to have that issue for a while.

It depends on your definition of "done to death."

There are definitely solution spaces where it is impossible to be profitable right now. Especially if two tech giants (FB/Google) are competing in that space - they likely can't even profit in the space because if their competition with each other.

You also have to consider traction. Facebook is not the paragon of social networks (in fact they're a bit ass), but no one is going to pull the reins from them while they continue to have as much user traction.

Well, if you've never heard of a company offering that service/product, then you're probably not alone there.

Someone offering a product doesn't mean they have saturated the market for it, or even made the average customer aware that they exist.

Even if they do exist, and they have saturated the market, the fact that you still want to build a different product might mean there is innovation left to do in that space.

So no, I don't think anything is really done to death. If you want to do it, go with your gut.

I had an elderly friend who got into on-line dating, a lot of those apps use the same engine (or really similar ones). Of all those they weren’t really user friendly for the 70+ crowd. In fact a lot of things are very unfriendly for the 70+ crowd.

Secondly, from observation I see that every time there is a new platform, there is room for a few more instances of X.

Slightly off-topic: you probably shouldn't do a secure messaging app.

Security experts agree: if you're not an expert, don't build security apps / systems.

Back on topic: I say if you can come up with a plan to compete with existing competitors, and it seems reasonable to you--go for it.

I think there is always room for a better mouse trap.

search was considered done to death before google. of course, it really is done to death now...

What about DuckDuckGo's recent explosion in popularity?

The excessive certainly combined with ellipses was meant to imply irony.

Essay Time. But DDG + NSA is interesting. Google was attractive to users because it gave them what they wanted - instead of the busy "portals" and paid placement. It was fast, honest, clear and had a better ranking algorithm.

Today, people don't want to be tracked/monitored, and unfortunately that is key to Google's business model. They were right to aggressively try to head off facebook, but wrong to abuse users to do it. They are definitely "evil" (their "don't be evil" meant don't be like microsoft or IBM, who pushed users around as it suited. Arguably, a publically traded corp is legally obliged to put profit above people - ie be "evil"; but it is possible to serve both, as google once did).

So, DDG is giving users what they want, and out-googling google, in a specific sense.

It's been said it's difficult to create sustainable competitive advantage in search, because users can trivially switch. But one thing google has been great at is fast response times. Users really care about this, and because it's so expensive to build huge server farms all over the world, this aspect is a SCA. DDG is far slower than google; and google suggest often feels local to me. Perhaps this could be replicated with AWS, but DDG hasn't done it.

But I think you're right: previously DDG was a niche success. But with the change in what users want (because of NSA/snowden revelations, and likely there'll be others), that is absolutely inconsistent with Google's business model for ads, then DDG really could overthrow them. But DDG make enough money to afford comparable server-farm investment? (Still, that gets cheaper all the time...)

Google could of course go back to being purely about search, and not acquire user data so aggressively... but giving up user modeling would massively undermine their ad profits, and they are now slaves to Wall Street.

So... interesting.

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