| No product controls it's own destiny. You initially lead with a use case, but end up following how people actually use your product, or competitive products, and iterate on them in order to retain and attract users. -------------- The broader point here though is that, at least with consumer software, you will not be able to compete with Google AND Facebook AND Snap AND Amazon in any category. Maybe your product can beat Google+ at social networking, you won't beat Facebook and they'll either buy you or siphon your users. You might be able to build a better enterprise messaging system than LinkedIn but Microsoft will bleed you dry with a better enterprise sales team. Even new categories that are subsets of broad categories eg. Social/Ephemeral Messages have no chance of surviving, as they are features to existing products that have BN of users. So the best chance you have as a software startup to compete is to sell to the Cartel (Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft), and hope that you're given enough lattitude to see the product that you're ruddering play out as long as possible. |