Ask HN: I Found My Competition. Now What?
About a week ago, I discovered that 75% of my idea has been implemented by a site that's been around for almost 3 years. Last month they had 100k unique visitors and about 4x as many pageviews. The missing 25% is, however, non-trivial. I think the existing site is not as clean and clear as I would have liked. There's less of a focus on media and more on text (my site would ideally have both). The ads are somewhat annoying and not helpful (I have some good ideas for making money that is actually useful to my users).
On the other hand, my idea is very much dependent on a strong community so my competitor's existing userbase is a huge advantage. Now, my question is: How do I proceed?
As I see it, I have two options: 1. Carry on. Slowly build the site, initially invite-only, and just bank on it being all around better.
2. Contact my competitor (a very small team of two or three devs) and offer to join the team.
Of course, if I contact them, they might choose to reject my offer so I have to be careful about what I say to them. And if they accept-- what is a reasonable way for me to be compensated? I obviously want a piece of the pie here.
Another thing that will have an impact on my decision is that I wasn't really looking to dominate the market with my site. I would be happy to make a modest income while helping my users. On the other hand, I don't know how happy I would be being in the backseat on the existing dev team vs. the driver on my own project.
I'm obviously not the first person in this situation. Does anyone have any advice or experience they are willing to share? Thanks in advance.