How do you deal with competitors?
Gabriele Mazzola 🧭
17 replies
Since our launch in November, we've been focusing - mostly - on developing a real product (mobile apps). However, I've noticed many many many competitors have been popping out.
Many people have been telling me: "hey, this is cool, it means that there is market for that". I agree, but at the same time, this is honestly stressing me out a little :P
Any suggestion? I'm sure this is a problem affecting many of you fellow makers!
Replies
André J@sentry_co
You gotta find the moat within the product. It can be many things. Branding, traction, unique technology, a partnership, polish. Something that isn't easy to replicate. But rn it's a AI goldrush, so moat should not be a priority right away. But rather something on your roadmap that your constantly working towards. brick by brick.
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@sentry_co I agree with this. Something that makes you different and stand out from your competitors. Honestly I think the best way to do that is to be yourself / your company and not try to be something or someone you are not.
Nowadays more than ever people value genuinity and it's not something you can fake or pretend for long periods of time. You can see it with various brands and companies all the time, and the ones that are genuine generally always do well and are there in the long-run.
@luca3927 Yepp, You have to just buckle down and not listen to the naysayers. There will be a lot of why don't you just be more like the current status quo, when you try to do something different and new. Only after it becomes a success will the naysayers stop. My go to protection from this is to say: I hear you, but this is what I believe the future will look like. You believe it will look the same as it has in the past. I don't. The world is constantly changing. If you can predict the change, and build that change. Then you won't have to worry about competitors, you will be miles ahead, and they will play catchup.
@sentry_co Hey André, long time no see! Thanks for the suggestions.
I agree with that, it's a bit tricky right now with everything that's going on in the AI field. I also agree with @luca3927 on the genuinity aspect: we're trying to build a product that we're also personally using and we ourselves are part of the target audience, so we deeply genuinely care about reaching a great product that serves the needs of people that travel like we do!
I guess that makes it easier to be genuine about it
@luca3927 @gabriele_mazzola I guess having access to the best data is the moat in this field. Map, Geographic, historics, restaurant reviews, hotel reviews (When I'm in Barca I like to stay 2 nights at each hotel, just switching when I discover something new, I use hotels.com, but would be cool to ask an AI instead). Also travel apps can perform really well on insta. People love vacay pics. It would be to hard to scale that to 50-60k followers
I would suggest to focus on what you can control - building a great product for your customers.
Worrying about your competitors unless they you are losing lots of prospects isn't worth the stress, you have plenty of other (more important!) things to stress about!
Launching soon!
GTM quicker - figure out how you differentiate - what is your "superpower" Ie what can you do that they can't that isn't repeatable.
@gabriele_mazzola he means that their agency's service “beats” competitors at the root in terms of quality, quickness and accuracy of execution))))
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Then make it better than everyone else!
I think being aware of, but not distracted by, your competitors is the balance you need to hold. Best of luck as you continue your product work Gabriele!
@gabriele_mazzola You are so welcome. I've hit the Notify Me on your upcoming launch. Looks pretty sweet - as a huge traveller myself. Would love your thoughts on Marlee - we're in the final minutes of launching and aiming to hit the top3! Let's go!
@jade_grimwood Awesome, just upvoted and signed up!
Gonna give it a go over the coming days (I saw the onboarding requires some focus and proper time allotment!)
Please do let me know if you have any feedback on Touring! :D