Ask HN: How to restart a project when competition has grown a ton?

3 points by sankalpdomore 2 years ago | 2 comments

I am a Product designer for 11+ years now and have been building side projects for long.

All my previous project were passion projects and I never focused to monetize them. 2 years ago, I got a domain to build a link in bio tool. I was excited and wanted to focus on this product to make money.

I started well. Build a website. Started talking about the project in public and got some initial praise & signups too. I was still in the process of designing & building the tool but I switched my full-time job and got busy there.

It's been 2 years now and I see a lot of link in bio tools out there. I am now unsure whether I should still pick up the project and launch it. Or I should just let it be and let the domain expire.

I am not sure what should be my differentiator now so when I launch, it gets used and so I can charge for a better feature or product. If you've been in similar situation before, I'd highly appreciate your advice here.

I am great at designing & building software. My previous projects have been used by users and I've also made some side income from them. I also feel that if

I just offer a very well designed link in bio tools, which is quite rare to find (only a few handful companies are able to pull it off), then maybe there's a chance to capture the market - here the USP will be a well crafted product....but still, I am unsure.

Any feedback/suggestion is appreciated.

cenan 2 years ago |

It would be helpful if your tool had a unique feature that differentiates it from competing tools, but even if you came up with such a unique feature, its going to be copied eventually. There are so many Link in Bio tools these days and all seem to be more or less the same. But competition isn't necessarily a bad thing. Despite the competition, I've seen social media profiles use different tools, not just the best out there. Even if you had built the best tool, its not going to make much of a difference if no one knows about your product. Maybe you could focus on go-to-market strategy. You could narrow down your target audience and redesign it for a specific audience instead of something too general. Something just for artist, designers, musicians, doctors, lawyers, students etc. and try to get one influencer who has similar followers to use your tool in their bio. You should drop a link here to get more feedback.

oatmeal1 2 years ago |

> I just offer a very well designed link in bio tools, which is quite rare to find (only a few handful companies are able to pull it off), then maybe there's a chance to capture the market - here the USP will be a well crafted product....but still, I am unsure.

It really depends what a "handful" here means. If there are several companies doing a good job already, it will be tough for you to catch up. If you could find one feature that current tools are bad at, and an audience that feels intense pain about that, then you could potentially get big. Try to own a niche if you are playing catch-up, instead of trying to outcompete the biggest players.