Re:Ask HN: A competitor just launched and I am at 60%. Quits?
by arisAlexis on Thursday July 20, 2017 @08:07AM
(#14811712)
Their prices are pretty much competitive already, was kind of surprised I think they are operating at cost for the launch.
Re:Ask HN: A competitor just launched and I am at 60%. Quits?
by le-mark on Thursday July 20, 2017 @08:46AM
(#14811965)
Let them validate the market for you. Assuming there are no other players in the area, then this is something new, without a market. Who knows, maybe you both have been chasing the wrong thing, something that no one wants.
The problem then becomes judging their success from external factors. For exmaple, from my perspective, it seems like there have a been a lot of floundering "database as a service" types of services lately. People have been building different types of scalable datastores and failing to find a market (won't name names here :))
If your market is price-sensitive, either because you're selling to consumers or because you're selling to small businesses who are usually stingier, then competing on price can work, and to the extent that you can be the product that these guys get compared to you may be able to ride their coat tails as they spend on marketing the category.
If your market is not cost-sensitive, consider open sourcing your software and then selling consulting services for it; your customers may even contribute patches back. This will probably set a ceiling for how successful you can be since contracts will naturally top out at some value because companies can always take your open source code, but it may let you compete.
There are probably other strategies if you want to compete, but realise that you will have to compete and you will have to tailor your strategy to you customers.