Everyone has already done it
In my new phase of work, I’m not trying to build a startup. I’m trying to do fun things that can solve problems, I get to learn new things and hopefully along the way be of value to some people. In the last few days I’ve ditched a couple of ideas (will blog about why in a bit). As I go through ideas, I’m reminded of one simple rule:
“Everyone has already done everything”
Want to build a cool product? Someone has already done it. Somewhere, sometime, maybe even now, maybe many people.
It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. In fact, at its most simple level its validation that the thing you are planning to build has a market and has users. It means that the market exists. Perhaps they got first mover advantage.
But this doesn’t mean you can’t do it: faster, cheaper, or whatever you need to make it happen. Don’t be intimidated by others in your space, research what they’ve done and then go do it better.
Before GitHub there was Sourceforge.
Before Google there was Altavista.
Before Altavista there was Yahoo!
…and before before ChatGPT there was Google (just a bit of snark there).
Or as Battlestar Galactica put it “All of this has happened before and will happen again.”
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