"Me-too" products are good. "Me-too" ideas that require network-effects to deliver value aren't, and that's a key difference I see with a lot of 'me-too' ideas that are destined to fail. It's not that you're copying an idea, but that you're trying to clone a network.
Being another time tracking tool has a pretty good chance of being successful, assuming the definition of success is profit. Being the next facebook has a pretty low chance of being successful, with any definition of success.
Bring on new time trackers, calendars, etc - people will flock to the execution and ideas that give them value, competitors will learn from each other and good ideas will get incorporated in various services and products. That's great. Build another social network system... unless you're serving an extremely targeted niche, nothing will happen.
I think the people advocating against "me too" companies had in mind the people who thought they could make a Facebook killer by copying them and adding that one extra feature/twist that would compel everyone to switch over.
I think the big lesson to learn here is to carefully evaluate the microeconomics of the market you want to get into. To compete as a bootstrapped startup, you'd want:
So for the time tracker example, you can start the business for the price of web hosting, LLC paperwork and software development. However, you'd probably want to invest time to make it easy for customers to switch from competing services.
agreed. however, imo, the big one that people overlook is the 'network effects' one. just as it would be appealing to be facebook, trying to become the next facebook is darn near impossible because of the network effects.
Getting someone to use your timetracker can be an uphill battle, but unless they're deriving value from other people using the same timetracker, you've got a fighting chance of at least convincing them to give it a try. But if much of the value they get from timetrackerX is that all their friends and clients are also on it, and they share time info around... it's extremely hard to even begin to compete with that, because it's not a feature you can replicate.
Being another time tracking tool has a pretty good chance of being successful, assuming the definition of success is profit. Being the next facebook has a pretty low chance of being successful, with any definition of success.
Bring on new time trackers, calendars, etc - people will flock to the execution and ideas that give them value, competitors will learn from each other and good ideas will get incorporated in various services and products. That's great. Build another social network system... unless you're serving an extremely targeted niche, nothing will happen.