What to do when an $8 million gorilla launches 3 weeks before you

Re:What to do when an $8 million gorilla launches 3 weeks be... by prakash on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @08:16AM (#850198)

Firstly, don't characterize competition as a 8MM gorilla, when they are a startup.

Second, don't worry about competition. Focus on your users. Listen to them. Iterate rapidly. Add features request by your early users.

The other way to think about it is the facebook > twitter status update* as a product. Taking one component of a successful product and making it a product.

* comparisons to fb might not be completely accurate since one of the founders, apparently had the idea for twitter when folks were updating their IM clients.

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Re:What to do when an $8 million gorilla launches 3 weeks be... by apgwoz on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @08:52AM (#850254)

> comparisons to fb might not be completely accurate since one of the founders, apparently had the idea for twitter when folks were updating their IM clients.

I had the idea for twitter back in 1998, but I didn't do anything with it, neither did the founder of facebook... Ideas mean nothing without execution.

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Re:What to do when an $8 million gorilla launches 3 weeks be... by ErrantX on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @09:17AM (#850295)

Firstly, don't characterize competition as a 8MM gorilla, when they are a startup.

Even when they raised $8M in funding?

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/09/15/clicker.com-launches...

I think the word startup is the one misplaced :)

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Re:What to do when an $8 million gorilla launches 3 weeks be... by prakash on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @09:20AM (#850299)

Even when they raised $8M in funding?

Yes. $8MM doesn't mean they have customers/users.

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Re:What to do when an $8 million gorilla launches 3 weeks be... by ErrantX on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @09:26AM (#850319)

I dont quite understand the relevance of that? $8M is probably a lot of money from where this guy is sitting :)

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Re:What to do when an $8 million gorilla launches 3 weeks be... by davi on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @10:24AM (#850416)

It's amazing how much money rich organizations can waste, and how much time they can spend on the wasting.

They can get tempted to reinvent a better wheel for $$$, rather than reusing existing wheels for cheap; then they get sucked into a time/money sink of epic proportions while the simpler solution grows like a weed.

Not what always happens, but what can happen.

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Re:What to do when an $8 million gorilla launches 3 weeks be... by ams6110 on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @10:26AM (#850419)

$8MM is a lot of money but that doesn't mean it will be spent wisely. During the dot-com days I worked for a company that had $30MM in funding and pissed every cent of it away.

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