“Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

Very often engineering types can only think of differentiation in technical terms. I think I can say that, in practice, at least in mature markets, differentiation is more about positioning and marketing rather than almost anything else. Easy examples:<p><pre><code> - Cars - Bottled water - Computer monitors </code></pre> The vast majority of automobiles produced today have reached a level of design and manufacturing maturity that makes them pretty much equally reliable and equivalent. The days of a Porsche or BMW being markedly better than a Toyota or Nissan are gone. Sure, we can point at the extremes and find differences, but I am not talking about that, I am focusing on what the vast majority of consumers look for or need in a car. Today you could pick any vehicle almost blindly and not make a purchasing mistake. That was not the case a few decades ago.<p>How do they differentiate and sell you cars then? Branding, positioning, marketing. They sell the feeling of owning the car rather than any true technical differentiation, because those really don&#x27;t matter as much in non-technical markets.<p>Bottle water is another case. I&#x27;ll generalize and say that most bottled water is pretty much the same. Or, let&#x27;s put it another way, no bottled water has magical properties that make it significantly better than the others.<p>Again, marketing. They are selling you an image. In some cases it&#x27;s a glass bottle with a different feel or a social mission. The product, however, that thing you drink, most of which you are going to urinate, is basically the same. If you position the product well you can command much higher pricing than the competition.<p>Computer monitors fall under the same category. Nobody cares any more outside of those using them for very specific applications. There are only a few companies who make LCD panels. Every single computer monitor buys from them. So, if you buy a 24 inch HP vs a Dell monitor they very likely have exactly the same LG or Samsung panel inside. They might even share the rest of the electronics. For most computer users these products are perfectly interchangeable; they just don&#x27;t care because it makes no difference at all.<p>Not sure how computer monitor makers differentiate their offerings any more to the masses. Sure, there are folks who are more comfortable with one brand over the other (despite the fact that it might actually be exactly the same product inside) and, of course, there&#x27;s pricing. This is one example of the fact that significant differentiation might not always be an absolute necessity in order to have a successful billion dollar business.<p>One area where they do differentiate --although consumers never see it-- would be in the terms and relationship they have with distributors and retailers. This is a big money play. For example, HP could drop two million dollars of inventory into Best Buy warehouses, effectively on consignment, and get paid based on what is sold. Best Buy, will, of course, push those products because they represent pure profit without any capital investment to speak of. This is a distribution chain differentiation that drives sales rather than differentiation to drive consumer behavior.<p>Books have been written about this topic. I&#x27;ve read a few of them over the years. Still much to learn.

One category that&#x27;s missing on the left is &quot;Parents.&quot; There&#x27;s Tinder for parents (Peanut), Birchbox for parents (multiple subscription boxes). It would be interesting to think about what Uber or AirBnB for parents would be.<p>I couldn&#x27;t read the article though because I got that absurd uncloseable newsletter subscription screen. That was one of the most user-hostile things I&#x27;ve seen on a website lately.

Some say that&#x27;s how they got the idea for MongoDB:<p><pre><code> Snapchat for Databases</code></pre>

Do I have any of these &quot;realms&quot; wrong? It seems the best startup idea would be one that adds a new &quot;realm&quot; rather than rinses and repeats for another direct object.<p>Uber for = simplify a process that involves transporting or delivering something somewhere<p>Tinder for = rate&#x2F;advertise&#x2F;connect some product nearby<p>Birchbox for = periodically refill a perishable or consumable<p>Airbnb for = locate and book some experience or resource

By &quot;taken&quot; do they maybe mean &quot;validated&quot;?<p>Ideas are executed not &quot;owned&quot;. The proof is in the doing.

Reading the article and trying to think of different startup ideas. Gets a non-closable (AFAIK) modal that covers the whole screen force you to go back. Maybe a startup idea that helps entrepreneurs grow without adapting to bad UX behaviour is a great idea that needs attention

&quot;Airbnb for Gamers&quot; according to the infographic isn&#x27;t taken. Any potential there? Letting people rent out their physical gaming rigs to other people in the area, in their homes. Seems like it&#x27;d be pretty easy to set up.<p>I could see it be kind of like gaming cafe&#x27;s in Asia, except you&#x27;d be renting a rig in somebody&#x27;s actual home. I don&#x27;t know if there&#x27;d be any market for this, but it seems like it wouldn&#x27;t take to much to whip up and to a trial run in a city.

I started scrolling around, and then an unclosable &quot;subscribe to my newsletter&quot; blocked the entire page.<p>WTF???<p>No, I don&#x27;t want to subscribe to your newsletter. Furthermore, forcing me to subscribe to your newsletter just to read a silly post on your website is a jerk move.

Tinder for bodily fluids is just tinder.

This gives strong flashbacks to the dot com boom and bust. Folks were going through ISO codes looking for new B2B marketplaces to launch.<p>Start with an end user need.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;itsthisforthat.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;itsthisforthat.com</a> (2010)<p>:)

tinder for weed. somebody did tinder for weed. that&#x27;s got to be the most young californian thing ever.

This idea needs to be incorporated into <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thisstartupdoesnotexist.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thisstartupdoesnotexist.com&#x2F;</a>

Tinder for laundry seems like good, clean fun.

F annoying pop-over after X seconds. I will <i>not</i> give you my email.

It would be neat to see a more in-depth analysis on the success of these X for Y startups vs non.<p>A big reason for X for Y, besides simplicity of explanation is...<p>X is usually a novel NEW process -- or way of doing things -- that either became only recently possible , or was recently demonstrated as successful.<p>Suddenly it becomes clear that this NOVEL new process can be applied in other areas.<p>Uber and AirBnB opened up efficient sharing of expensive resources that were underutilized prior.<p>Now, the natural next step is:<p>&quot;What other expensive resources are underutilized?&quot;<p>Boats? Commercial retail or wharehouse space? Tractors and heavy equipment?<p>So, in the early stages of rolling out a newly realized novel process, it seems impossible that the process should not expand to a number of similar problems.<p>Until the low hanging fruit is all gathered.<p>Uber for Y, for example, seems to be only in its VERY EARLY stages.<p>No doubt there are MANY Y&#x27;s out there to roll out the Uber model to.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;7q806" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;7q806</a>

I am always questioning why startup idea have to be unique ? Let&#x27;s say you sell &quot;books&quot; we all know who&#x27;s biggest.. but they idea was not definitely not unique.<p>My opinion service quality for customer matters more than uniqueness..

I think the reason this sort of thinking works is that it&#x27;s an effective way to perform exhaustive search in idea space where metrics may be hard to define, based on combinatorics. A very early example of such an approach was Ramon Llull&#x27;s <i>Ars Magna</i> (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ramon_Llull#Llull&#x27;s_Art_(Ars_Magna)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ramon_Llull#Llull&#x27;s_Art_(Ars_M...</a>).

Airbnb for bathrooms, you can use it to allow desperate strangers to pay you to use your toilet. Preferably while you&#x27;re not home. We&#x27;ll call it Airpnp.

20000 startup ideas - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21112345" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21112345</a><p>Seems people found this pretty funny when it was posted<p>&gt;&gt; Document software defects, using hand and horn signals.

I&#x27;m looking forward to seeing the first startup in the Uber for Beards space.

My startup business - GoldenEgg<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thegoldenegg.in&#x2F;services&#x2F;address-change&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thegoldenegg.in&#x2F;services&#x2F;address-change&#x2F;</a>

the list is questionable. I was very hopeful to see if there was a tinder for gamers (say, to find people to play coop games) but there&#x27;s some sort of tinder inspired incremental game in that spot, so I wonder how much is it really curated and how much is a proxy to a Google &#x27;feeling lucky&#x27; search

Can we all just please agree that Tinder for Kids should not exist? Please?

Uber for underwear? I’m having trouble imagining some of those open spots.

this post was obviously just satire. but, just so we&#x27;re clear, Paul graham&#x27;s article on this concept unequivocally says this is NOT how you build a start up.

It&#x27;s not about is it taken it&#x27;s who can do it better

&quot;Plaid for Bitcoin&quot;

Besides the &quot;X for Y&quot; approach, I find it laughable that every time someone says they are doing just &quot;X&quot; that the usual Bay Area response is &quot;How are you differentiating from your competitors?&quot;<p>Go ask how UPS differentiates themselves from FedEx. Or how Shell differentiates themselves from Chevron. In reality, while product differentiation is good, unless there already exists a monopoly that has eaten every inch of the market, the market is probably big enough to fit multiple nearly identical products at the same time and still have them all profitable.

I searched a startup name in a seperate tab, came back and had an inescapable subscribe screen.<p>If your going to attempt to hold the rest of the article hostage pending a subscription to your newsletter, at least let me get interested first. This is both hostile and ineffective- and unsurprisingly is the most amusing part of the website

Is anyone else offended by the non-dismissable email signup pop-over on this page? Ctrl&#x2F;Cmd-R refresh allows continuing to read from the same point, but still....

the popup modal for the newsletter is undismissible and blocks the article completely in the latest safari

popup that keeps me from reading the article unless I give them an email address when I&#x27;m half-way through?<p>No thanks.