Ask HN: Does bootstrapping a clone within an established market make sense?
Fresh account here created to ask this question. I'm in my late thirties and I spent my entire career at tech startups (as founder or employee up to CTO and VP Product positions). I never scored really big, but I earned well. I'm currently free to start something new and I might look for a new job as tech or product lead, but I'm also entertaining a thought of launching a SaaS business.
I don't have a groundbreaking or innovative idea, but I'm great at execution. I'm more than happy to bootstrap something small, without ever taking outside capital, a company which will never grow over few dozen employees. I'm looking for a quite likely path to build a $5-25M company rather than a quite unlikely path to build a $100M-1B company (the latter seems to be the dominating goal in startup community).
Considering the above, can creating a clone within an established area be the way to go? Something like another website monitoring service, another ticket system or another ecommerce CRM. None of these is actually something I want to pursue, but you can get the idea.
I understand that building a product is just the beginning and that much more effort is required into marketing and sales and I'm prepared for that (I know that underestimating it is a common mistake made by techies wanting to launch their own business), but they are also the areas I'm least experienced (although not totally inexperienced), so I'm unsure if this is a good idea.
I would love your opinions on whether what I want to do is viable. Or should I forget it because I will just do better by launching a software house or by creating an offshore development center for some US/EU company (I'm from the Central/Eastern Europe so it's the best place for this considering talent/culture/salaries mix)? Let me know what do you think or share your experiences if you've done or tried the same. Thanks!
Published in 2017, this chronicle by @Remed details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
I'm paraphrasing a little bit, due to imperfect memory, but I've always been inspired by something Bob Parsons (of Godaddy fame) said:
"Never be afraid to enter a crowded market. Just be better than everybody else".
So yeah, if you're confident enough if your ability to execute at a high(er) level, then I think it can make sense to do something that's fundamentally similar to an existing business.
OTOH, it you want to make big money, it might be better to pursue something in line with Peter Thiel's ideas about wanting a "monopoly" and having something that's 10x better instead of being an incremental improvement.
I think either model can work though, depending on your goals and on your ability to execute.
See also: discussion of "fast follower strategy".
http://www.forbes.com/sites/avaseave/2014/10/14/fast-followers-not-first-movers-are-the-real-winners/#5bfe137f9d7e
https://hbr.org/2012/06/first-mover-or-fast-follower
http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2016/06/02/why-fast-follower-is-yesterdays-tech-and-business-strategy/#47ea05f74805
I honestly beleive taking this approach puts you at an advantage and a better chance of success. Everyone else has done the ground work for you and educated the market. Just do not be worse than them and you have a good business.