How different does your product have to be?

Question

Often founders are trying to rack their brains for the next super unique idea - and are often demoralised when they find out it exists elsewhere.

How important is it to be the only player in the market? Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts. We’re a platform with one of our core features existing elsewhere offered by a decently popular competitior. However, we have a tonne of features targeted specifically for Enterprise that they don’t have.

I’d love to know what people think, and how they approached standing out in a competitive space :)

Accepted Answer

Customer input: Use questionnaires, interviews, or prototype testing to get input from prospective clients. As you create your product, pay attention to what they have to say and take their preferences and suggestions into consideration. Addressing customer needs and preferences can help you create a product that stands out in the market.

Answer

@deniz_savkay am agreed

Answer

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Swayam · Answer

You dont have to think outside the box, a tweak is enough!!

Paolo Go · Answer

I agree, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just add your value and commitment, so people can trust you and your product

Deniz Savkay · Answer

Just a tweak that isn't existing on other current products is enough. The amount of uniqueness of the product should be sufficient for new customers to use your product but not other products.

Jotam Dveer · Answer

Don't be different. Be distinct. 👈 this is the way.

NJ Robb · Answer

The 'blue oceans' get saturated pretty quickly now. The first mover is not always at an advantage as they generally have to teach the consumer, the second mover and after, usually can move faster and have identified problems with the incumbents model. Facebook Vs myspace is a great example and google Vs AOL/Ask Jeeves.

The reality is, differentiation comes from marketing and not functionality. Look at Coke and Pepsi, in saas, Mural and Miro are pretty much identical products just different geographical locations but everything else is almost identical: Launch time, features....name etc.

The design and development of your app can help but don't try and jump the gun too quickly as you could be developing features people do not want.

For enterprise clients, sometimes it is about how long it takes to use the app that puts them off ie; a two week learning curve is too long. they do not have the time to allocate to it even though it makes perfect sense to the rest of us for them to make the time.

To a consumer, price sensitivity is often more important than to an enterprise as they have a whole load of other considerations, SLA's, GDPR etc.

Igor Lysenko · Answer

I think all product owners want their product to have a feature that no other product has, this increases the chances of the product becoming more successful.

How different does your product have to be?

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