I was thinking, why do we have multiple products for the same problem?<p>Is it a problem they are solving that is missing in other products? Or<p>Are they just trying to earn from the potential market? Since the market size is enormous!!<p>For that understanding, I would like to see your product, who your competitors are, how different you are, or why you build.
Why do we have multiple products for the same problem?<p>At a very simple level...someone sees opportunity. That is, they believe can do it better, and sometimes they do.<p>Walmart wasn't the first discount store.<p>Facebook wasn't the first social network.<p>The iPod wasn't the first mp3 player.<p>Etc.<p>Where things go wrong is that very often competitor converge (into a sea of sameness) instead of diverging (each into less competitive markets). Perhaps we are wired for conflict and to fight toe to toe, instead of fleaing and prospering elsewhere?<p>In any case, for more details on why and how to avoid cookie-cutter-ness:<p>- Zero to One <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_to_One" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_to_One</a><p>- Blue Ocean Shift <a href="https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/what-is-blue-ocean-shift/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/what-is-blue-ocean-shift/</a><p>Of course there are other sources of inspiration.
Just dividing up the market between two (or a few more) pretty much identical products/offerings is how many mature products end up. It happens because because for, say, two competitors in a market, the marginal return on investment for trying to capture more market drops off, and if they all try to be the only provider... there's a chance the other one will win that game so it's easiest and less risky to just divide up the market.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium</a><p>It happens a lot...<p>CVS / Walgreens<p>Home Depot / Loews<p>...
My product: <a href="https://emojirades.pages.dev/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://emojirades.pages.dev/</a><p>A daily emoji + charades game where users are shown 3 emojis and have to guess the word.<p>With regards to gameplay and being a "daily" game, I drew inspiration from Wordle: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html</a>
Ironically, my product is to come up with product ideas: <a href="https://insanelygood.tools/ideas" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://insanelygood.tools/ideas</a><p>What I've noticed is that most products are trying to solve one singular problem but in different ways.
people approach problems differently.<p>look at linear, asana, trello, jira, and shortcut for example. similar problems, but different approaches. different tastes, different preferences.<p>aws, gcp, azure, digitalocean, hetzner, vultr too. similar problems, similar solutions, differing interfaces and differing quality of support.
My product: <a href="https://onlineornot.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://onlineornot.com/</a><p>My competitors: there are thousands, and yet we still solve the same problem in different ways