I think people are too afraid of competition. There is no product without a lot of competition, and suprising as it seems, second best, 3rd best and so on are still making a hella lot of money.
Take microsoft word - it dominates the word processing market. But there are many people earning a lot of money selling OTHER word processors.
Competition is irrelevant, and in his particular case, he has a huge advantage over Nike. He has one product that he is working on, while Nike has a lot of other things to think about, and this is not important. He can add features immediately with no approval process. He can do anything he wants without paying attention to the damage it may have on other parts of the company.
This dude is at a clear advantage over Nike, so very frankly, I don't really think there is a problem.
Couldn't upvote you enough. This also applies to a startup vs. another startup. There have been a number of "Ask HN:" posts recently along the lines of "oh shoot, we just discovered there's another startup working on a similar idea! should we give up?"
If nothing else, seeing that other people are pursuing a similar idea is GREAT -- it's a confirmation that the market probably exists for it.
If nothing else, seeing that other people are pursuing a similar idea is GREAT -- it's a confirmation that the market probably exists for it.
Well I agree that the converse is true—no competitors is definitely a red flag. But having lots of competitors in the startup space doesn't necessarily mean there's a market for it, quite often it's just something cool that geeks are into but may be a small winner-take-all market that's already been won (eg. Twitter/Facebook clones).
This is right on the money. There will always be someone to compete with, and that competition does nothing but benefit the users in the long run. Even if you manage to best your old competition, someone new will eventually come along and challenge you to become better, or replace you because you couldn't.
Our main competitor landed a $5 million A round (we are bootstrapping and have no intention of raising money), but we still pull in $1500 a month in donations. It's not "a hell of a lot", but it's a lot when you consider the ratio of donors to purchasers. Yes, the smaller business can still do very well!
Take microsoft word - it dominates the word processing market. But there are many people earning a lot of money selling OTHER word processors.
Competition is irrelevant, and in his particular case, he has a huge advantage over Nike. He has one product that he is working on, while Nike has a lot of other things to think about, and this is not important. He can add features immediately with no approval process. He can do anything he wants without paying attention to the damage it may have on other parts of the company.
This dude is at a clear advantage over Nike, so very frankly, I don't really think there is a problem.