alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: My competitors have flawed products but I can't get traction
Problem: I constantly save Instagram Reels/TikToks about restaurants, events, pop-ups, and things to do, but I always forget about them because they get buried in my saves.
Solution: I built Cork. You can send a Reel or Tiktok directly to Cork without even needing to leave the app, and Cork will automatically extract the info in the reel and save it in a map + calendar.
However, I've been finding it hard to get traction while my competitors have gotten traction/funding. I strongly believe my app outperforms all known competitors (their apps fail on reels of popular creators while mine succeeds).
I'm not here for pity or to advertise, but I'm curious why people ship products that don't work for a pretty significant number of inputs when the teams are big enough (employees + funding) to pretty easily solve the problem in a cheap way (as I've done) or at least have a temporary high-performing solution with GPT.
TL;DR: imo my app outperforms competitors in raw performance. why is a team with manpower and funding failing to do something a 2 person team did in a month?
Comments
The actual 'performance' of the product is usually the last thing that matters to the consumer. People happily put up with all sorts of bullshit while complaining about how bad the product is usually for a number of reasons. A lot of engineers get trapped in the idea that if your product is simply less enshittified than all the competition then they should win the product market battle. But product marketing has little to do with those things and more to do with getting the product in front of actual users and making the user imagine using your product every day. We're in an attention economy, if you can't grab a users attention then your product means nothing.
I think you should be open to the idea that your competitors are not competing with you in the way you think they are. They may be fighting (and winning) elsewhere. Fundraising, customer acquisition, specific use cases, communities, niches, etc. Also, they might be losing. From the outside every company wants to look successful - raising money, hiring, growing, etc. The real story is almost never told, so you can’t assume much from the outside.