In 2004, I was going to do a startup with some friends that would ship a product allowing enterprises to "firewall" the IM protocols, ensuring that private inter-company messages stayed inside the company's 4 walls. We gave up when 3 other companies launched products to do the same thing, including AOL, all well-financed.
Companies launched after we decided we were outgunned ended up doing better than the companies that were there at the beginning. AOL dropped their product entirely.
Every time a friend of mine has built a product in a space that seemed spoken for, they've done well. Look at Marty Roesch with SourceFire; nobody would have predicted green fields for SourceFire when they launched, but Marty and his team IPO'd.
The single toughest part about getting a company off the ground is product/market fit. It's finding the right group of people to talk to and having the right conversations to figure out what the feature/function/benefit should be, how the product should be packaged, and what it should cost. Think of it this way: someone else did the hardest part of the problem for you.
In 2004, I was going to do a startup with some friends that would ship a product allowing enterprises to "firewall" the IM protocols, ensuring that private inter-company messages stayed inside the company's 4 walls. We gave up when 3 other companies launched products to do the same thing, including AOL, all well-financed.
Companies launched after we decided we were outgunned ended up doing better than the companies that were there at the beginning. AOL dropped their product entirely.
Every time a friend of mine has built a product in a space that seemed spoken for, they've done well. Look at Marty Roesch with SourceFire; nobody would have predicted green fields for SourceFire when they launched, but Marty and his team IPO'd.
The single toughest part about getting a company off the ground is product/market fit. It's finding the right group of people to talk to and having the right conversations to figure out what the feature/function/benefit should be, how the product should be packaged, and what it should cost. Think of it this way: someone else did the hardest part of the problem for you.