It's already been done, or has it?

As soon as we think of an amazing startup idea the first thing we often do is trawl the internet to see if someone has already built the app, the service ,the hardware device. We want to know if it has already been done. Oft times, we are deflated to find out it has been. But if we have to search, has it really been done? If no one knows about a concept in market it raises a lot of interesting questions:

Did they execute well against the idea?

Is their product good, but the distribution poor?

If the distribution is poor, does that mean the product is actually bad?

If the distribution is poor, does that mean it’s not solving a real problem?

If the distribution and product are both good, are the switching costs too high?

Did the team have the right funding?

If they had the funding is the timing too soon – is the market ready?

The truth is we’ll never be able to answer these and other questions. And so it brings us back to the very first moment of inspiration. We thought it was a great concept and maybe that is enough. We know most things change their shape in the development process anyway. Maybe we should build it regardless of what is out there. Build our version of how things could be. Remembering of course that most fortunes are made with old ideas done better. Property is the oldest business in the world and still to this day creates the most millionaires. Even Youtube, a new kinda business, arrived when there were already over 400 video sharing websites (that we know of).

It’s another reminder our world is big on ideas and small on execution.

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