Ask HN: Do you talk to your competitors?

[lovekale]

Early stage startup founder here. Do you generally talk to your competitors? Friends, enemy, or frenemy?

I've been building an app to reduce the noise in human conversations and recently I found a similar app that started a year before me. My instinct is to email the other founder and ask him "Hey how's it going? Can you share what you've learned with me?" but I wasn't sure if putting myself on their radar can be a good or bad idea?

Curious what the HN community think? What's your experience in your "relationship" with your competitive peers?

[mindcrime]

I generally treat the whole thing as fairly neutral. I guess more of a "frenemy" at times. I don't go out of my way to antagonize competitors, and I'm happy to wish them well and cheer for them in general. Somebody, I think it was Steve Blank, once said (paraphrased slightly) "Startups don't die from competition with other startups, they die because they built a product nobody wants." I think that's pretty close to true.

All of this, of course, is regarding competitors who are startups. If we're talking Microsoft or Oracle or somebody... well... no comment.

[lovekale]

OP here. You're spot on about the #1 killer of startups isn't competition, but product-market fit. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. Maybe "frenemy" is how I'll go about it.

[tjalfi]

The legal industry has ILTA for this (http://www.iltanet.org/about/about-ilta). Many law firms use the same technology stack and it is common to ask our peers for opinions on products or policies. The results are quite positive.