92
382 Comments

Who here is competing with big guys?

I write every week about a lot of Micro SaaS Ideas for devs and marketers looking for profitable Micro SaaS Ideas and analyze various new comers.

My App Flezr - NoCode Website Builder is taking on Webflow, Wordpress, Softr

Below are a few new comers taking on big guys.

Microns competing with MicroAcquire
Superblog competing with Wordpress/Webflow.
Potion competing with Super

Anyone else competing with big guys?

Tell me your product and who your biggest competitor is.

What are you doing to craft your own lane?

  1. 1

    I'm building a tool that combines Intercom and Linear, in a product management tool that is targeted at small, autonomous and fast moving teams.

    This might be the stupidest idea ever conceived, AMA about it 😅 but at least it's going into Beta in a few days.

  2. 1

    I'm building Meetingly.co, an AI meeting assistant for sales that's competing with Gong and Outreach.

  3. 1

    Building real-time analytics...

    Trying to build saas that's built for businesses that have enough data to make real-time useful means competing with big guys with big sales teams.

    We're kinda like DataDog, but instead of focusing on your server metrics or errors, we enable you to pipe in your analytics events and generate real-time metrics. It's a different concept, so explaining it is the key challenge.

  4. 1

    Going for Intuit and Mailchimp.

  5. 1

    I am building a niche journaling app, now even Apple went into the game which proofs for me that I am onto some big market. I tried to keep it very simple and intivie it is called memoiri for anyone who would like to check it out

  6. 28

    Depending on how you look at it, Indie Hackers is competing with:

    • Hacker News
    • reddit
    • Twitter
    1. 14

      And Product Hunt, which has 40+ employees

      1. 4

        Since you brought the topic, just a quick question around PH.
        Why is IH not building something like PH where users can post launches? It don't need to be super big but may be at a small scale.

        May be its on cards in your pipeline but just wanted to check.

        1. 19

          Three reasons:

          1. We have a very small team that's focused on other things at the moment. Can't do everything.
          2. Product Hunt already does that well. I don't see much value in creating a secondary inferior version of their main value prop.
          3. Real estate. Where would we put this, exactly, that would give it a shot at meaningful success? I like having the forum as the main attraction to the site and wouldn't want to replace that with launches. But if we put launches somewhere else, they won't get enough attention to generate the traffic necessary to make it a worthwhile place to launch. It kind of has to be the #1 thing you do.
          1. 3

            Hear! Hear! The forum hosts launches all the time, but is so much more. I love the focus of this site and the community that's built up around it is great.

          2. 1

            I was wondering this myself, but it seems that you guys have thought this out thoroughly and have some solid reasons why not. BUT - I think you're product page is already pretty dope - maybe just adding a vote feature there would be a cool addition - my 2c.

          3. 1

            clever point! Interesting to know these reasons

        2. 5

          Fwiw, for those of us building b2b (with non dev customers), we'd get little value out of a product hunt like feature.

          Too many on this forum assume that everyone here is making products for other developers and/or saas operators.

      2. 2

        Reddit especially because I naturally tried to close these threads on the lines lol

      3. 2

        Yeah, I thought this would be the #1 competitor, tbh was surprised it wasn't listed.

      4. 2

        @csallen How many employees are in Indiehackers Team?

    2. 4

      Indie Hackers is unique in its form.

      It is more friendly than HN and Reddit.

      More informative than PH.

      Twitter is just different.

      1. 2

        I agree. Just joined but it's like Reddit minus the nonsense and distractions lol

    3. 2

      I would still prefer IndieHacker because the audience acquisition is very is just raw. Everyone here has the same mindset which makes more helpful discussions doesn't make the platform a farm

      1. 1

        This, exactly.
        I love, love, love Indie Hacker because it feels like true collaboration. There's so much interesting content and valuable tips here from people in the same mindset.

    4. 2

      Never though of this way because most people consider IH as one of the big guys. But yes, its relative based on what you compare to.

  7. 1

    I am building a niche project management tool that started as a personal side project for specific personal needs. So I might be competing with big companies such as Jira, Trello and the like.

  8. 1

    Hi!
    We are building ALTO (youralto in Google), competing big guys such Linearb or Harness.

    Solution/features:

    • Automated reminders for pull and merge requests: Set customisable reminders and receive Slack notifications to help your organisation ship code faster

    • Full visibility into your team performance: ALTO offers an overview of your dev team's daily work, eliminating the need to sift through excessive data and help you prioritise important tasks.

    • Make your team work as an effective unit: Set your team’s ways of working and iteratively release working software that delivers value for both your organisation and users.

    Any feedback would be appreciated.

  9. 1

    I am in the process of building a startup to compete with Google, Azure, AWS, Nuance c., etc., in Text-to-Speech.
    I am a CS student and I have been working with my classmates for about a year in a product that might not be superior in terms of TTS, but it offers one thing none of the other companies do. It is unlikely these companies will copy us any time soon, since that would imply re-structure their whole business model and replace core technology, but who knows. We are taking that chance!

    Hopefully we will launch by the end of the year.

  10. 1

    VideoDubber AI is competing with HeyGen, Synthesia, Maestro, Veed and others in providing the cheapest but more accurate video translation tool with voice cloning.
    Try out for free! No credit card.

  11. 1

    I am starting small as a mobile dev. I feel everytime I am working on something, there is always a bigger guy I have to take account.

  12. 1

    Hi fellow hackers!
    We're building dashwaveio, a cloud build tool for Android dev and we are aiming to make android dev more collaborative and fast, increasing developer productivity. In short, the tool allows you build your local WIP code on cloud with a CLI command. Every build gets stored and can be previewed in virtual and physical devices (please visit our website to know more ). We're in public beta currently. Please feel free to try out the tool and provide us with your feedback. Some of the direct and indirect competitors in the space include Android Studio, expo, bitrise

  13. 1

    Google Analytics is illegal in Europe, so I'm building OptikAnalytics.

    There are other lightweight analytics platforms that—like OA—don't require cookie consent, but you also miss out on heatmaps and session replays.

    OptikAnalytics lets you choose per website how you want your analytics to work, rather than have to piece together 3 different tools (one for visitors, another for heatmaps, and a different one for replays).

  14. 1

    Building Minemo, a Financial Ed-Tech SaaS which creates personalised financial education learning paths that are tailored to the individual's financial needs, goals & learning style.

    We are essentially competing with wealth managers, financial advisors as well as the myriad of personal finance & investing courses that already exist.

    How is this different? Essentially Minemo stands out with its personalized learning approach, diverse content formats, and a strong community aspect. We focus on making financial education engaging, interactive, and tailored to individual needs (both financially and in terms of learning style).

    Would love to get some feedback from you guys. We're working super hard on the mvp rn but here's a quick landing page with more details: www.minemo..net

    And of course happy to do the same for your ideas!

  15. 2

    Hello, I'm thrilled to introduce myself as the founder of Flangeweld.@om, a dynamic enterprise dedicated to the manufacturing of industrial piping flanges. With a passion for precision engineering and a keen understanding of the pivotal role flanges play in industrial connectivity, I embarked on this entrepreneurial journey to deliver top-notch solutions.

  16. 1

    Hi guys, I think we are. Liki is taking on the giants such as Gmail, Microsoft Teams, Miro, Notion, and more in the collaboration space. I feel a bit naive reading back this first sentence.... :-/ But yes we do. What sets Liki apart is our commitment to transforming text-based communication into dynamic, visual experiences that boost productivity and engagement. We're not just offering an alternative; we're redefining how people interact and teams collaborate. We're not launched yet but will soon be if someone is interested check it out Li . ki

  17. 1

    I launched GOPilotX in October of this year on the PlayStore.
    It is an AI training coach and run tracker.
    Our competition are all the big players Strava, Runkeeper, Runtastic and Nike Run Club.

    The approach of GPX is totally different:

    • AI generated training plans
    • AI generated custom workouts
    • Animated playback of GPS routes

    The approach is to take absolutely everything currently possible with the technology we have to make running as easy and effective (and hopefully as fun) as possible.

  18. 1

    Tired of all the cringy content on LinkedIn, I decided to build a competing platform. called JustConnect. Focused on creating and keeping in touch with your network without all the distractions.

  19. 1

    After Apple Pay, every company added the "Pay" suffixes to their brands. I registered vegaspay domain immediately when I saw Samsung Pay and Droid Pay appearing on marketing screens for ATMs. It is now a few years later. One of my competitors in the Vegas Pay brand is a financial services product located in Brazil with cooperation with China. I think the Brazil Vegas Pay will be BRICS and not USD. Another competitor for the Vegas Pay brand is an American based payment systems club. There is an online casino in Asia that calls itself Vegas Pay. One or two gambling content creators call themselves Vegas Pay, but I suspect their success will dry up in the near term.

  20. 1

    I just shared Tim Bennetto's story on my newsletter - he is building Pallyy (a social media scheduling tool) that competes with big guys and he talks about why he prefers going into big competitive markets!

  21. 1

    It's great to connect with fellow innovators. I'm currently working on an AI-driven project management tool, TaskGenius, taking on giants like Asana and Trello. Our focus is on seamless automation and intelligent task prioritization to provide a competitive edge. What about your project?

  22. 1

    Our product Feedspace is an all-encompassing solution for feedback, testimonials, bug reports, tutorials, one-way interviews, and beyond—limitless possibilities in one tool.

    We are comparing against Testimonial, Senja, and Userback.

  23. 8

    We're an authentication platform focusing on simple UX, legendary support and transparent pricing.

    Product link: Kinde.com

    Biggest competitors:

    • Auth0

    Competitive advantage:

    • Pricing that won’t break your bank: no lock-in contracts or SSO tax.
    • Easy set-up: get your app up and running in minutes (not months)
    • Simple design: intuitive UI built for everyone - developers, admins, customer teams and users
    • Best-in class support: real humans giving expert advice anytime you need it
    • No data hostage: we won’t ever deter you away from taking your data, we’ll even help you migrate off Kinde
  24. 1

    Im taking on Dotdash Meredith, Future PLC & Hearst Digital Media 💪

    1. 2

      Cool, I am an user and thinks it's an great alternative. Especially since Postman has become somewhat bloated.

  25. 7

    Notion and Confluence!

    We had a large competitor when we started, but then an even larger one emerged afterwards, so we've had some experience with this ;). Around ten years ago we launched a wiki/intranet tool for small companies (https://papyrs.com). Lots of the software at the time was either very slow, clunky or enterprisey/complicated.

    The large competitor at the time was Confluence, and to a smaller extend SharePoint.

    We launched with a nice drag&drop editor with blocks you could drag on a page to create wiki docs, forms/dbs, and so on.

    If that sounds familiar, then you might have heard of a company which launched afterwards, called Notion ;).

    We're a small indie shop though, and for us it's still a great market, because we focus more on companies than consumers.

    The important part is to stay focused on your own vision and don't mind the competition too much. We're in the same space but our product is different from the competition with a different focus, and we just build what we think and know our customers love. The internet is a big place, and even with large competitors who will out-marketing or out-spend you, there will always be plenty of people you can find who will prefer your approach!

    1. 5

      Spot on. The market is so big to absorb many tools in same niche.

      By the way - your headline "The easiest way to create an online intranet for your company​" is too good and perfect. In less than 2 seconds, anyone could understand what the site is about.

      1. 2

        Thanks, good to hear!

  26. 1

    I'm building https://getguidesail.com for SaaS founders to make userflows/guides on their apps at lightning speed.

    Competing with a few very large and established guys like UserPilot, UserFlow, Intercom, and many more.

    Hoping to capture a segment of the market who don't need as many bundled features as these competitors offer, and just let them build some damn guides.

  27. 1

    Hey there! I'm currently working on a business directory and competing with big brands like Yellow Pages, Yelp, and Hotfrog. My goal is to build a user base and then relaunch the directory with AI technology to compete with those established brands. As of now, I'm focusing on building a community and gathering subscribers. Once I have over 100 subscribers, I'll take it to the next level with AI.

  28. 6

    I run RanchWork.com and I compete with:
    -Indeed
    -SimplyHired
    -ZipRecruiter
    -Monster

    I've been able to carve out a niche by keeping my product simple, lowering my overhead costs, providing listing options at reasonable rates (Paid options start at $55), supporting the Ranching industry by advertising in their trade magazine & local state associations, and - honestly - just being consistent in posting jobs 6-7 days a week. The 'keep it simple, stupid' framework, essentially.

    1. 3

      Love how you're unbundling the hiring market with curation and quality!

      1. 1

        appreciate that, Chris..

  29. 6

    With https://www.daito.io/ I am competing against Google Authenticator, Authy and other 2FA Authenticators.

    Quite the unfair game (as they can offer a free solution) and already have global audiences.

    1. 1

      Cool. Great to see someone else working on identity/security products on this platform. I will check it out.

    2. 1

      I am sure this is quite a tough one and this is also one of the most toughest niche to grow. I wrote about 60+ niches at https://microsaasidea.com so I can easily say it takes guts to build this. So, kudos to you.

      I understand products like these have tough competition with big guys. What stage are you at?

      1. 2

        We are live and growing, but rather slow. Selling a security product was and is a tough nut to crack.

        The general strategy is pretty simply: provide unique USP's, a moat or two and try to niche down somewhere nice with happy B2B customers. This is obviously very different from B2C oriented authenticators.

  30. 3

    Hey, I'm going against Hashicorp's Vault by building: https://envsecrets.com. Places like this thread are a rare gift. Thank you so much for this amazing thread ❤️

    envsecrets.com is an open-source end-to-end encrypted tool to manage your environment secrets. It essentially wages a war on your .env files and supercharges your secrets management.

    I've love for you to create a free-forever account and take it for a spin. Let me know how you feel about it and ping me in case you need any help! ❤️

    1. 1

      Wow that's ambitious. Your product looks dope!

  31. 5

    We're working on SimpleTour, a tool that lets you build interactive product walkthroughs right on your site.

    From the start, our goal was to offer a similar product at a cheaper price. Such that, no matter what size of operation you're running, you'll have an onboarding tool that gives you back your time to focus on developing your project.

    Big Boy Competition:

    • WhatFix
    • WalkMe
    • Appcues
    1. 1

      Is this still active? Your site appears to be down.

    2. 1

      How are you planning to compete with these big boys?

      Also, what do you think about how can you get your early customers?

      1. 1

        @liveashish There seems to be a void in the market for smaller IH style organizations. We're offering a similar, simpler, and more affordable tool.

        We're attempting to land early customers through cold email, spreading the word on IH and other communities, and eventually launching on ProductHunt.

    3. 1

      Building a startup solely based in price is a risky game because that will bring customers who will eventually churn. But I am sure the market is big for something like this to absorb more tools even at normal price.

    4. 1

      This comment was deleted a year ago.

      1. 1

        Hey @Primer, we're in public beta. Feel free to give it a try. Would love to hear your feedback!

  32. 5

    im working on a ticketing service for events called https://einladung.app
    Propably competing with:

    • regular cash payments
    • paypal moneypool
    • big providers like eventbrite etc
    1. 2

      Kudos for the cool name. (But I am German. Wonder how it reasons with non-Germans).

      1. 2

        Think it’s safe and pronounceable as long as it is something complicated like Eichhörnchen app 😜. Native market language has it charms as well.

        1. 1

          i plan to mostly support germany in the early stages to see how it goes. i also secured https://invitely.app for potential global support. but interesting approach with the native language marketing thing. "einladung" might work on international markets. time will tell.

          1. 2

            Naa "einladung" is way coooler than invitely :)

            1. 1

              i'll keep it in mind, thanks :)

              1. 2

                I would recommend to focus extremely on your niche. Einladung is way more telling than just another anonymous app name.

                1. 1

                  what do you think my niche could be? events and tickets are extremely broad. i dont think i can compete with big concerts, musicals etc. i guess im gonna concetrate more on small/medium sized gatherings like straßenfeste, flomärkte, wg parties etc. finding customers is for sure my biggest task right after release in about a few weeks. i really dont know who my customers could be and how to find them and then market to them.

                  1. 1

                    Hmm, sounds like you started backwards creating a product and then look for an audience, problem and solution. You need to meet your audience with an open mind and listen to their problems.

                    Defining a niche is about setting boundaries until you have a "clearly" defined audience. Niche should be big enough to have economic opportunities and small enough to not be crowed by competitors.

                    A good book on this is "Zero to Sold".

    2. 1

      i just saw paypal no longer supports the moneypool feature. yay i guess 🎉

  33. 5

    I'm competing with the likes of algolia, sajari and coveo, all search as a service companies worth north of a billion $. The product is https://anvere.net
    My lane is response time and ease of use

    1. 1

      Products built around Cecurity, Two factor auth, Search etc takes of course a lot of time to get those initial customers and traction.

      Betting on 'response time and ease of use' is good but how are you marketing this? Any hacks?

  34. 5

    Nectr (https://nectr.network) is taking on LinkedIn. (Gulps)

    We're competing on three fronts:

    • letting people get very accurate in how they describe their abilities, experience and availability
    • allowing people to share their profile freely and without the recipient needing to be a member of Nectr
    • focusing on creating genuine, uncontrived networks of people you're worked with and who can vet your abilities
    1. 1

      Wow. 'Taking on LinkedIn' itself is scary. But yes, we are all here indie hacking to build great products.

      What stage are you at? Any early traction?

      1. 1

        We are at the MVP stage. We have a handful of profiles on the platform at present.

  35. 4

    I'm about to launch a drumming education site thelandsrumbled.com, with lessons and essays and a few software tricks to make the learning process nicer. My competition is huge and well established, sites like drumeo.com, plenty of youtubers, magazines etc.

    I hope to distinguish my site by going into greater depth of detail as others. Providing a platform that brings the 'drumming workbook' online - in my opinion, a better way to structure practice sessions and track one's learning than through video. I'd like to build a platform where other teachers can publish lessons for their own students. First and foremost I will be working at writing with a passionate and profound voice (My unachievable guiding principle is that I hopelessly aspire to become the Carl Sagan or Seth Godin of drum education).

    1. 2

      Love this! The music education space is in need of so much disruption.

      It should be as easy to learn an instrument online as it is to learn a language with Duolingo or Babble.

      When's the launch?

      1. 2

        Thank you Sophia. The launch will be quite soft, I'll gradually be releasing content over the next few weeks. Currently balancing writing content with software development and things like mobile optimization. Currently writing a lesson per week but not having time to proof and edit. I think I'll get to say 6 final drafts, polish up the content, publish and start promoting. Then follow with a new article every 8 or 9 days.

        I really hope there's space for disruption. I find most educational material shows you things to learn, but does a poor job of connecting all the dots and going deep on the how and why, and how to approach the craft as a whole. From a technological standpoint, drumming workbooks don't provide the multimedia experience that the web can, but they provide better guidance than most web/video based lessons. I'd love to bring out the best of both worlds.

        Anyway, appreciate your comment. Cheers.

        1. 1

          Cheers! That's a great plan.

          I think there's definitely still room for innovation in edtech for all the subjects.

  36. 4

    I'm working on https://gitmodules.com which is competing with Git submodules. Submodules is a Git subsystem, does that mean I compete with Git itself? Or with Linus?

    1. 2

      Hey, this is cool. If I may offer some feedback, I'm a little confused after watching the video and reading the landing page. I kind of get how it works abstractly but it'd be really helpful to me if there was some kind of practical example or actual repo on the homepage demonstrating how it works and how I'd use it in reality.

      1. 1

        Hi Glench,

        Thank you so much for your feedback! I think you're right, it's not quite clear how one can apply the product to real-life repositories.

        I've discussed that with my teammates, and we're going to add screencasts on using Git X-Modules with GitHub and Bitbucket Data Center to the landing page. Updating the docs is also on our to-do list but the landing page has more priority at the moment.

        We're going through this phase when there are no many users yet for our product. There's no much feedback and it's hard emotionally. That's why I can't thank you enough for posting your comment, it gives the energy I need to keep working on the product.

        1. 2

          Ah, sorry to hear that it's been hard emotionally but I'm glad you found some energy from my comment!

  37. 4

    Alternative to Magento and other marketplace builder,
    https://tradly.app - core is a headless api for developers and a simple web builder for no-coders.

    One of the purpose I started is providing a easy accessible solution (from price, easy of launch) to social entrepreneurs who want to take on big marketplaces. Also Platform two sided model can help communities grow together.

    As a marketplace market is niche and our architecture is flexible, we made b2c model available with our new pricing structure.

    We have some weakness like a powerful builder for Frontend, but still trying. What do you think?

    1. 2

      I wrote earlier to my subscribers at Micro SaaS Ideas about opportunities around Ecommerce and Headless niche. So, I absolutely understand what you are trying to achieve.

      Open sourcing is one good options to get some traction. I am sure you must have seen https://www.medusajs.com/ growing exponentially in the last few weeks.

      See if that would work.

      1. 1

        Hi Upenv,
        Thanks, will checkout the resource. Can share the particular URL?

        I love open source companies and developers. Yes know about medusa from IH. But the ideal customer profile am getting more inclined to is people whom I have seen in my travels and networks who want to do something impactful but doesn't have technical knowledge. So I would expect they will search for "build like __" and then look for a no-code solution. Wouldn't expect them to know proper hosting to host this and run their business. After all, we are open to them if they want to migrate.

        Recently an Australian client who was with us for a year. validated their business and growing And now getting funding. So they want to hold the IP or want too much customisation, they are doing this migration with our API now.

        Do you think this market will not be good enough?

    1. 2

      Community softwares are a great niche at the moment you know already.
      Keep going!!

  38. 4

    Competitors with giant war chests. A lot of them raised more than $10m.

    • Linktree
    • Beacons
    • WithKoji
    1. 1

      Yeah, thats the whole point of this post. If we can keep consistency, over a period we can take on the 'competitors with giant war chests'.

      By the way, just checked https://mylinks.ai/, its cool and beautiful.

  39. 4

    I'm working on Typefully.io which will compete with Typeform, Jotform and many others.
    The main differentiator is focus on conversion rate with conversion-boosters best-practices built into the product.
    It's also much more customizable than most other solutions.

    1. 1

      When I wrote about 'Building Micro SaaS products around forms, surveys' at MicroSaaSIdeas last year, people were blasting off saying this is saturated but then Tally came and started making revenue.

      There is still room for Form Builders. Its good know that you are embedding 'conversion-boosters best-practices into the product.'

      Any notes on how you are planning to get through and get traction?

      1. 2

        Well, it is a saturated area.
        Tally and Reform are good examples that show that you can still make it in this market.
        I came to this product not by mistake. I run form-data.com which is a backend service for forms. You bring the form, we handle the submissions.
        Over the years I've seen many mistakes that people make when they build their forms. And it's really not easy to build forms that meet all the best practices. You have to know a lot about UX, handle accessibility, show proper error messages and success messages, and so much more.
        There are a few products around forms conversion, but eventually they do analytics and tell you how to fix your forms.
        I thought that you shouldn't be working that hard. A form builder can give you most of these things out of the box.
        I had a lot of thoughts if this should be part of form-data.com or a separate product. I actually even built the initial version as part of the same product, but then realized that it's not the same audience and never released it. Users of form-data are people that want to build their own forms. In many cases they come from site builders like Webflow where they build their forms. So I've decided that Typefully.io should be a separate product. It was also a good opportunity to choose a different name because form-data really isn't the best name ;-)

        To your question about getting traction -

        1. I'll publish it with my form-data users
        2. I will try to promote content around form conversion and form optimization rather than form-builders directly.
        3. Standard places like PH, IH, DH, Reddit...
        4. I'm really not that great at marketing, so any suggestion will be highly appreciated :)
  40. 4

    I wouldn't call Super the big guys.

    With https://versoly.com/ im competing vs WordPress, Webflow (2.1b company) and custom code.

    1. 1

      Good to see this.

      On Super - the last time I saw them, they were at $40K MRR (this could be way higher now). So, still big compared to Potion. Am I missing something?

      1. 4

        Webflow is doing 100m a year. Not sure where you draw the line and call a company big.

        I wouldn't do that before at least a few million in ARR.

  41. 3

    We're competing with Lootrush. They got a 12M investment, we got 25k. It's going to be fun!

  42. 3

    I’m currently working on Binamite.com, a crypto-fiat payment platform that offers the flexibility to get paid in a mix of crypto and fiat, with seamless payouts to bank accounts and wallet addresses. While our competitors include giants like PayPal, Paroneer, and Wise, we strongly believe that bigger isn’t necessarily better.

    When we started building Binamite, we wanted to make it easier to pay our employees in crypto. As we spoke to people about it, we realized we weren’t the only ones who needed this solution.

    Fast forward a few months, what started out as an idea has now turned into a reality. We have a product that allows users to conveniently send money across permissionless blockchains without ever having to buy crypto, and to use it to pay for services billed in fiat without having to sell your tokens. Binamite lets you use crypto as currency.

    Competing with the big guys is hard, but we’re working even harder! Our team is adding new features by the day, so do check out binamite.com if you have the time!

  43. 3

    I had some brief success against the big guys but then a slow decline and eventual bow out.

    During the first lockdown of Covid in the U.K, i noticed that food delivery was in full swing. One of my friends is a third generation butcher with a family owned business spanning over 100 years. Another friend was a business and numbers whizz and eventually we had a founding team of 5 passionate individuals wanting to innovate through uncertain times.

    We decided on launching a new-style chicken shop with free range produce and flavours that our hometown of Hatfield hadn't seen before.

    The street-food scene in London was vibrant but hadn't managed to make its way into Hatfield at the time, instead the town was full of blue-chip options such as McDonalds, KFC, Nandos and franchise chicken shops like Peri-Peri (If you aren't from UK then you may not be familiar with the huge franchise chicken shops like Favourite Chicken, Moes & Peri-Peri)

    Now, our advantage is that WE WERE THE LOCAL COMMUNITY

    We intimately understood our target market.

    The blue-chips employed U.K-wide marketing strategies, with little consideration for whats going on locally.

    We moved fast and innovated the ordering journey. Doubling-down on instagram as our main marketing channel, allowing us to funnel customers through our own in-house ordering portal rather than giving 30% to UberEats/Deliveroo.

    As we were in a lockdown, we struck a deal with a local 'dodgy' Pub landlord, cleaned up his kitchen and started to operate from there. Our strategy:
    -Craft a messaging approach that directly resonated with the local community
    -Utilise our network as locals who grew up in the area
    -Go to war for the business of the local community using brash and direct marketing initiatives taking aim at the blue chips

    It was a winning recipe and for the first few months we could barely keep up with the demand.

    After some national press coverage from The BBC & The Guardian that picked up our story, we were approached by the local shopping centre where the blue chips were based! Eventually taking a shop that was in the middle of Burger King & McDonalds!

    By this time, we had been going for a year, reinvesting all back into the business. There was 5 of us so the dynamic was the business first. I have to admit that this caused slight hardship on our personal financial statuses. The decision to take the unit in the shopping centre meant we had to step up operations, employ 10+ staff and press go on huge increases on our spending/inventory/stock.

    At the same time, I had fallen down the rabbit hole of emerging technology. Starting with crypto, leading into blockchain, NFTs ('Web3'), AR/VR, ZK, AI, SaaS etc

    insert tech abbreviation/buzzword here

    All of a sudden the local chicken shop fell down the ranks of interest in my very active brain. I had become infatuated with the opportunity and paradigm shift happening in technology. Especially as i had fallen into a precarious financial position due to a low income.

    Luckily, I had amazing business partners and friends who kept the shop operating and the brand going.

    Slowly but surely, their motivation dropped too and rather than scaling & innovating like we once were, it was more along the lines of sustaining the daily operations. Which ultimately lead to our decline and closing of the shop to move onto new ventures.

    McDonalds is still absolutely killing it in our home-town, but I'm happy to say that there are now multiple local-businesses operating in the area and we are all proud to say that we saw an opportunity and took it, innovating food delivery operations before the big guys!

    That was my first start-up, and i will back with vengeance to dethrone the big guys again.

    I have a concept bubbling away at the moment that can rival UpWork & Fiverr. Let's see if i can get to market.

  44. 3

    I don't know if being "big" in an emerging market is a massive benefit, unless you have a monopoly or unless you're massive. Opportunities are happening so fast and small VC funded or even bootstrapped startups can compete "codewise" with almost any of the big guys (with exceptions of course). I think it's about creating your audience and carving your place in a niche.

  45. 3

    We're really going after the biggest guys out there (Dropbox, Box, WeTransfer) with https://transferchain.io/

    Everyone needs peace of mind when uploading files to the cloud, and TransferChain helps secure your privacy in the cloud.

    🔐 Client-side end-to-end encrypted
    ✂️ File sharding
    ☁️ Distributed cloud
    ⛓ Blockchain authentication
    0️⃣ Zero-knowledge

    1. 1

      This comment was deleted a year ago.

  46. 3

    Me! I'm launching productised design agency (subscription-model) for AI and Tech startups. We're replacing un-reliable freelance designers, and slow large design agencies.

    Ive worked with many large design agencies on huge projects. I know how agencies operate, and I know their weaknesses. On top of that, because of my network, I know some of the best freelance designers that will work with me in my agency.

    In a nutshell, Im competing against design agencies with speed and reliability, in addition, cheaper prices for a reliable MRR.

    Feel free to check out my website: www.rithmm.io

  47. 3

    Big does not mean great. Keep it up!

  48. 3

    with alternativeto.net, we are competing through simileto.com. we are still new to this lets see how it goes. i'm constantly trying to improve simileto site

    1. 1

      Interesting. Can our software (swetrix.com) be listed on your website as well? We're an opensource and cookieless alternative to Google Analytics.

    2. 1

      Looks good, how can your application https://seeyo.info be added as alternative to linktree, taplink on your platform?

      1. 1

        You can message us your website info on twitter after creating an account on our website.

        What info we need. Info similar to this https://simileto.com/app/linktree/about

        And don't forget to tell about the alternative apps you want to add to and also mention the email you used to create your account.

  49. 3

    I'm not competing with any big guy :D at least not now. but just wanted to say good luck with Flezr! The landing page looks very good.

  50. 3

    Hi @upenv! Do I gain access to the archives with the Pro subscription?

  51. 3

    omnisearch.ai , though unique in its ability to make any file type searchable, is still adjacent to site search solutions like Algolia or Elastic.

  52. 3

    Hey @upenv,

    I took a look at your micro SaaS ideas site. Great idea putting together a newsletter for people looking for ideas to pursue.

    As for your question, I think we're all competing with the "big guys" in a way unless we hyper-niche down.

    I run a google maps ranking agency for local businesses. Tons of competitors, but not so much if I niche further into "google maps ranking for dental implants" for example.

  53. 3

    My bootstrapped SAAS company (https://academyofmine.com, low 7 figures in ARR) competes with big players like docebo.com (they IPO'd couple of years ago) , learnupon.com (they raised 56M in Private Equity recently).

  54. 3

    At whitepaper.mx, we are competing against the mayor national and international business newspapers (nytimes, wsj, the economist)

    Our publication is a tiny organization compared to our competitors. Up until 6 months ago, we were only a 3 people team. We are now 14 between full-timers and recurrent freelancers.

    We cover national companies and business in a more profound and detailed manner than the big players can, and since we are subscriber supported, we don't have to aim for millions of page views. Rather, we aim for the highest quality business journalism we can create.

    While we do have ads, we never compromise the reader experience or content, unlike national publications which could never dig out of the page-view business model promoted by Google and Facebook.

    We are growing fast in both reach and paying subscribers, and now the big boys are starting to notice us. Almost all the large national newspapers have approached us with intentions of acquiring.

    It's still too early in the life of our publication to know how large we can make it. For now, we are already planning the next stage of expansion.

  55. 3

    Going up against LinkedIn -- wish me luck!

  56. 3

    Breakcold, a 3 weeks old product is competing with Mailshake

  57. 3

    Building in a space where others have existed for 20 years is tough! TinyURL was created back in 2002, and Bitly was created back in 2008. My goal is to build a URL shortener that is easier to use and offers the features most users will need when creating and sharing short links. I also like to say our URL shortener is a "Bit" shorter.

    T.LY URL Shortener

    1. 2

      Sounds good. Yeah TinyURL and Bitly have been in business for long time but over a period, hope you will create your niche.

      Good luck with that!!

      1. 1

        Thanks! Yes, they are so well known but the site is growing and recently made it to the first page of Google search for "Link Shortener"!

    2. 1

      How did you get such a short domain name?

  58. 3

    I'm building https://datagrab.io, a no-code web scraping tool.

    There are many other services that offer a Chrome extension (just like I do) for setting up scrapers visually, but I think my biggest competitor is webscraper.io.

    It's tough to compete, but one of the good things about web scraping is that it's such a huge horizontal market with many use cases. So I could (and I'm planning to) create spin-off products that target a niche and serve it well. I'm thinking something like a price comparison tool that aggregates SaaS products, an SEO audit tool, etc.

  59. 3

    I'm working on WeTask, my competitors are Asana, Basecamp and other PM apps.

  60. 3

    I'm working on https://docfig.com, a fast and simple team documentation/knowledge base for remote teams. Competing with Confluence, Notion, etc.

  61. 3

    Going up against a lot of big SEO companies with Centori (big one is Semrush which just bought Backlinko).

    The SEO game is changing and building a big list of keywords, writing a blog post for each one, and spamming for backlinks does not work any more.

    We're teaching marketers and founders how to build and manage effective SEO strategies that actually get them results, and building a different kind of SEO software platform to make it simple for them to do so.

  62. 3

    https://linkody.com competing with Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz.

  63. 3

    I have a WordPress plugin Simple Giveaways, competing against RafflePress which is also a giveaway WordPress plugin but it's a plugin from the folks of WPBeginner and they have several big products and a team of people just for marketing :D

  64. 3

    The product I’m building – Mumu X – is competing directly with the most valuable company in the world, which is Apple.

    Similar with the other big guys, their release cycle could take some quarters or even years. I think this is a sweet spot for indie hackers if you want to grind, work hard, and come up with a unique angle.

  65. 2

    Yes, my startup is Firecamp. io, I am competing with Postman.

    I still believe that There is a strong need for a Simple API testing platform for modern developers.

    1. 1

      This looks very interesting! Definitely going to give it a try.

  66. 2

    We're crazy enough to think we can fix software project management! We're competing against Monday, Jira, Clickup, Trello... you name it.

    Strangely enough, we don't truly feel like we're competing, the whole field is so frustrated that it feels like it's constantly hoping for something new (we might suffer from high confidence...)

    1. 2

      I've tried soooooo many project management tools out there. Some feel way too complicated and cumbersome while others feel like an afterthought. I think there's opportunity for a disruptor (like you) to come in and seize the opportunity.

      Good luck!

      1. 1

        Thanks for the kind word, very much appreciated. It’s hard to change a field so set in its way. It reminds me of YNAB when it was released, it was so counterintuitive that many didn’t get it but those who did loved it!

    2. 2

      Hey @TwoWeeks we're in a similar space! I'll def check out what you're doing. We also looked at 'project management' but really have a goal focused orientation with the product.

  67. 2

    We are also up against some giants in the space. Some context, we are building a platform to automate academic activities with AI powered solutions at https://reinforz.ai. Some of our biggest competitors include quizziz, opexams, quillionz etc but we belive our services provide arguably better solutions for a much more affordable price.

    1. 1

      I took a look at your website, and am a big fan! It seems like a great solution to a very real problem. Perhaps it could be helpful for you to look into partnering with schools to give accounts to their students for a more affordable price (perhaps $2-3/mo. rather than 4.49?). By giving this discount, you can encourage schools to give you hundreds if not thousands of customers who will be loyal to the service once they realize how much they enjoy your service? This seems to be the model of big competitors such as quizlet.

  68. 2

    I decided to adopt the adage of "go big or go home". ADTAQ is selling Virtual Private Servers so we're competing with the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in the "cloud" space.

    Surprisingly, I've found it somewhat straightforward to differentiate our product offering from the massive players in the space. For example:

    1. Customer Service - Need help? You can actually communicate with a real person. Try getting that at any of the big three.

    2. Optimizing for Specific Niches - We can be much more cost competitive than a "we must do all the things" monster corporation by focusing on just a few things to do very well. You'd pay $657.38 at AWS for what we sell at $20, and yes, we are even profitable at that price!

    3. User Experience - I spent a bunch of time making sure our UX is second to none. Two clicks to purchase, two more to provision your server, everything just works and is easy and intuitive. Do we have the same feature set the big guys have? No, but if you want that, they are already selling it (for more money).

    Fortunately for the kind of people drawn to this site, nearly all large companies eventually grow so large that they lose the ability to actually provide the value that made them grow in the first place. This is where we come in.

    As long as you can find your audience and demonstrate your value to them, there will always be a place for "the little guy".

    1. 1

      Checked out your website, I lol'd at "Maybe we're wrong, but we believe that not everyone needs API driven geo-diverse fault tolerant auto-scaling k8s delivered from the edge via a reverse caching proxy leveraging AI powered lowest RTT routing technology." 😂

      I think I found a mistake on your site:

      https://www.adtaq.com/network/ says

      HIGH PERFORMANCE AT A DISCOUNT SINCE 2007
      Upgrade your network experience now.
      Order a virtual server for as low as $10/month

      but on this other page (https://www.adtaq.com/datacenter/) it says

      HIGH PERFORMANCE AT A DISCOUNT SINCE 2002
      Forget about power outages forever.
      Order a virtual server for as low as $20/month

      1. 1

        Man, talk about sending mixed messages!

        Thanks, I've corrected both of those.

    2. 1

      Very well said. We've also did a little research ourselves and one of the best leverage us little guys have against incumbents is fast customer service (with an actual person).

    3. 1

      Wow. As we all know, competing in Infra/Cloud space isn’t easy. Nice to know that you are working on this. Could you please post the site here?

      1. 1

        Sure, it's www.adtaq.com. We are kind of the anti-cloud :)

  69. 2

    mindgenie.co is competing with Jira, Asana etc.

  70. 2

    We recently launched Onlysocial.io; we're going against Later, Hootsuite, and Manychat at the same time 😊

    We're offering:

    📅 Posting/Scheduling to 10+ Social Networks
    📋 AI Caption and Image Generation
    🔗 Link in Bio, QR Code, Vcard Creators
    🤖 Messenger/Instagram Chatbot Builder & Automation
    🛒 Social Commerce

    1. 1

      Nice. Looks like the social media footer links need to be updated/removed.
      Got paying customers yet?

  71. 2

    Hi, interesting Q! I am building a collaborative communication tool called Zapmail, and it's in the email space (with the big email players) . It's sort of taking the best of IMs and using it for emailing because in Gen Z, most people are used to texting.

    1. 1

      This one? https://zapmail.app/
      How far into the journey? Already got paying customers?

      1. 1

        Yes, that's the product. We have a few companies onboard using the platform, right now we are giving plan for free for a limited time. Planning to give AI assistants at a charge.

  72. 2

    We are a real estate web app that is facilitating the process of buying overseas property. We are against giants like zillow, realestatecomau and others..

  73. 2

    I've worked in design and advertising my entire career (on brands like McD's, coca-cola, both in-house and agency side) and realized that the agency model is broken.

    I launched a social media subscription service that gives you the full gamut of an entire social media team at the price of one hire and without any of the HR headaches.

    Grid Labs is an on demand social media service, where we take over your entire social media at a flat rate. Enjoy a fully baked out social media calendar each month along with unlimited posts requests through the month.

    We've been grateful to work with international brands since our conception including Jägermeister.

    gridlab

    1. 2

      Impressive pivot, bringing the full power of a social media team at a fraction of the cost and without HR hassle.

  74. 2

    I have always been passionate about project management and how it can help individuals and teams achieve their goals. That's why I created my own project management app, Stacks. I wanted to offer a simple, secure, and affordable solution for freelancers, small teams, and professionals in regulated industries.

    As a solo developer and entrepreneur, I have been doing everything myself – from development, design, customer service, marketing, newsletter, community management, and everything in between. I've poured my heart and soul into Stacks, and I'm proud of what I've accomplished so far.

    I'm going against all the big competitors in the project management space, with their massive budgets and teams of developers, designers, marketers, and customer service reps. But I'm not giving up and despite the challenges, I am proud of what I have accomplished with Stacks. I truly believe that it is a great project management solution that can benefit customers of any kind. The app has received positive feedback from users who appreciate its simplicity, security, and flexibility.

    However, I must admit that the app has not done as well as I had hoped. I know that this is not due to the quality of the service, but rather the amount of money that needs to be invested in marketing and advertising to make it more visible to potential customers.

    As a small independent developer, I don't have access to the same resources as my big competitors. I don't have a large marketing budget, and I don't have a team of developers and designers working on the app. But I do have something that they don't have: a genuine passion for what I am creating.

    I am determined to continue developing and improving Stacks, and I know that there are people out there who will appreciate and benefit from it. I may not be able to compete with the big players in the market, but I will keep working hard and doing everything in my power to make Stacks the best project management solution out there.

    So if you're looking for a project management app that puts privacy, security, and flexibility first, give Stacks a try. And if you're already a Stacks user, thank you for your support and for being a part of this journey with me.

    getstacksapp

    1. 2

      🚀 Amazing work! I will check out Stacks for sure.

  75. 2

    Ive worked as a freelance designer for 7 years, and hired by many large design agencies. I discovered their weakness; Slow and expensive.

    I launched a productised service that provides unlimited professional design for a very affordable price. I work with senior designers helping startups on branding and marketing.

    The startups I work with have a huge chance of succeeding at launch since we are the designers the big agencies hire!

  76. 2

    I think indie hackers are not competing with big guys because we don't have nothing to lose but they're competing with everyone. My vision about being indie hacker is just build cool things and getting people to use it, make money, not building an empire. At some point we get bored and move on to the next thing to build.

  77. 2

    I feel like I'm going up against lots of giants as a productized micro design studio! The big bois dominating the scene are the well established design agencies and I think DesignJoy was really the one who paved the way for us solopreneurs.

    So lemme introduce to you: Studio SuperFrsssh -- a productized micro design studio that's disrupting the traditional approach to branding, web and product design. We're all about experience-led growth and helping businesses build a customer-centric culture that ensures a consistent brand experience at any scale. With us, you don't just get beautiful design, you get a co-pilot who cares about your customers as much as you do.

    We're about to launch our site but here's our pitch deck in the meantime: https://shorturl.at/ipruX

    We're very, very open to feedback and want to be very, very open to business as soon as we get the last light bulb screwed in.

  78. 2

    A little late but I'll share my story.

    I run a commercial haunted house business with my family and we spend about $10,000 in digital ticket fees every year for being in business just one month. There are dozens of commercial ticket software companies but even the most affordable still charge $1.00 a ticket. So I started my own ticket company after looking at what expenses would be for software and delivery.

    Now I'm in the big pond with companies like Eventbrite, Ticketspice, Etix, and more. I guess it's a matter of time before I see how effective my idea and plans are.

    If you're interested, I love feedback. My website is. https://voodootickets.com

  79. 2

    I'm building https://NoUSB.co, a versatile file transfer tool that functions like Apple's AirDrop but with multi-platform, multi-device support and online capabilities. You can simply drag and drop files or folders, and they'll instantly appear on the other side without any in-between storage. Multiple peers can join the "virtual drive" and add their own files too.
    It also works as a Discord bot, allowing users to exchange files without storage on Discord's servers or file upload limitations.

  80. 2

    I'm building a simple webpage builder to compete with softr, carrd, notion, etc. It's as easy to create as writing a post, and one of the best features is the creation of Slack-like channels. https://slashpage.com

    If you're interested, watch the short video below.
    https://youtu.be/F_gGISFzXy8

    1. 1

      Looks good, I'll start using this myself. Good luck!

      1. 1

        Thank you! we've just added a new column feature! Check it out and let us know what you think! https://twitter.com/SlashPageHQ/status/1641048149761597443

  81. 2

    Help companies turn visitors into engaged customers via interactive forms builder
    https://www.marbleflows.com

    I am betting on Templates and PLG strategies at the moment.

  82. 2

    I am disrupting the chemical market by writing all the chemcials of general products used in society that is hazardous to us.

    https://github.com/Sulstice/global-chem

    It's an open source government that regulates the chemicals that sits above the FDA.

  83. 2

    I've just started https://talentwp.com/ which is a job aggregator for WordPress jobs (mostly development jobs). My main competitors would be big brands like indeed, LinkedIn, etc, but since I'm niched down to just WordPress jobs, I feel like that can help lessen my competition, at least for my prospective users.

    That does decrease the size of my target market, but I hope it will be a good move.

  84. 2

    With Transcodely, we are taking a swing at Amazon Web Services and Azure 😅

    Basically, we are launching a Cloud transcoding service that is both low carbon and low cost.

    We found that transcoding thousands of files is way too expensive and we ended up looking for a low carbon cloud provider.

    Next thing we know, Transcodely happened !

    We still are at an early stage and looking for early adopters...

  85. 2

    Maybe not the typical big guy, but the NYT dominates online recipes. I created sentientplatter.com to help people find exactly what they are looking for!

  86. 2

    Wohhhh, I'm just loving how many people in the comments here are starting underdog businesses. So good to see that nobody is scared to take on the more established players, I mean they had to start somewhere too right?

    Going to be a very exciting next decade in tech, micro-SaaS's everywhere supporting the individual lifestyles of their creators? sounds like a pretty epic future to me!

  87. 2

    Competing with: Slack, Discord, Teams

    https://www.therein.io/

  88. 2

    I am working on https://www.idaas.nl
    It is an open source and multi-tenant alternative to Okta, Auth0, Microsoft Azure B2C, Oracle IDCS and more.

  89. 2

    https://localazy.com is a software and content localization company competing with Phrase, Lokalise and other big guys in the software & content language localization industry.

    Our path is to listen a lot to our users, take care of the product and use a marketing strategy that can compete with companies with funding rounds in tens of millions of USD.

    It's a tough battle but worth it! I need to say it's awesome to compete with huge companies; one learns a lot.

  90. 2

    We're open sourcing a billing API / software. https://www.getlago.com/

    Biggest competitors:

    • Chargebee
    • Recurly
    • Stripe Billing

    Competitive advantage:

    • Developer-first, and you can build on top of us (for customization)
    • No 'rent seeking' pricing, we don't take a cut on revenue (Chargebee and Stripe will take 0.5-1% of the revenue as a fee, on top of the payment processing fees)
    • We're agnostic to payment processors, unlike Stripe Billing, we won't force you to exclusively use one payment processor (Stripe Payments, in their case)
  91. 2

    We are. https://dotenv.org

    Big guys: Hashicorp Vault, 1Password, and small but well funded Doppler.

  92. 2

    I'm competing with Filmora, iMovie, Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut, plus Vimeo, YouTube, and InShot.

    Also with Descript, and it seems based on comments below that I'm also competing with @heyart3m's Hipclip :-) (I've even used the Canva for video comparison before) and @Grazvydas's NovaAI (and we seem to both have the "one click" claim in our USPs!)

    I think what makes us stand out is that our SaaS (https://nuro.video) has a niche market : experts, course creators ; and applies unique insights to that market.
    Which means we couldn't compete with the advanced features of NovaAI or the "big guys" above, and we couldn't compete with Hipclip's editor UI... but it's not what our users want.

    And in comparison, it would be hard for most video editors to compete with us because our system is a completely different paradigm. So in my opinion there's a lot of space for very different tools to co-exist, even though the taglines might look similar.

  93. 2

    I'm working on a social media app based on the scientific method, I constantly think about beating the big guys.

  94. 2

    It's great to see that there are so many companies out there who are willing to take on the big guys and compete in their own lane! Keep up the good work!

  95. 2

    We're Lago https://www.getlago.com/ (Open Source Billing API for product led Saas) and competing against Chargebee and "Stripe Billing" (we integrate with "Stripe Payments", their main product, but compete against their Billing Product).

  96. 2

    I'm building UpBox.me, a SaaS to get files from your users or friends in one place. My big competitors are - in some ways - Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. So yes, pretty big ones 😅

  97. 2

    My team and I have been working for a couple of years on a behavioral tool that lets website owners see recordings of their website visits including the visitor's mouse flow, clicks, and scrolls. It's called https://watchthem.live/ . We also have heatmaps and whatnot.
    At the time, our biggest competitor would be HotJar.

    1. 2

      I really like this one that I have been using it for a while. Made our app evolve to a great one after watching the live users and their behaviour

    2. 1

      it would be great to have a product like this to monitor mobile apps usage. i have looked into so many products and most of them focus on websites.

      1. 1

        Great suggestion! We actually have that on our roadmap. It will be available by the end of 2023.

    3. 1

      Cool product. Although just as a heads up, the logo used in your Youtube videos looks a bit nsfw...

      1. 1

        lol that was the old logo. We're gradually replacing it across the web.

        1. 1

          Yeah I think so haha. If it makes you feel better 32/34 logo designs presented to me on a 99design contract all looked exactly like male genitals, the letter "T" does not make for a good logo...lesson learned haha

  98. 2

    I'm a co-founder of an AI startup Instill AI. At the beginning of the journey, we are building a Vision AI Inference engine that provides API to process images with STOA deep learning models. Our direct competitors were Vision-as-a-service such as Google Vision AI and Amazon Rekognition, those big guys...

    Then, we pivot to build a data tooling VDP to streamline the end-to-end visual data processing pipeline. Instead of fighting a spot in the crowded model serving and inference services and competing with the big guys, we position our data tool VDP as the missing piece in the modern data stack to connect Data and AI.

  99. 2

    I'm creating https://zencal.io our biggest competitor is Calendly. We decided to make a scheduling tool for teams to make our unique selling proposition. I will be grateful for your opinion :)

  100. 2

    https://railway.app and render.com are successfully competing with AWS, gCloud, Azure, etc by providing a very simple UX allowing to deploy apps in minutes

  101. 2

    @csallen see, it's kind of nice in this thread to see what folks are working on. This is how I used to use milestones

    1. 3

      Agreed, it's great reading through the comments. I would like to find a way to get there to be more interaction, though. Most people leaving comments don't get a response or even an upvote, and have no idea that anyone read what they posted and enjoyed it 🤔

      1. 1

        Agreed. I make a point to upvote several comments at least, but I have this persistent feeling here that many posts and comments deserve more interactions. The community is great, the quality is there, but the conversation could be more prolific and deep. I'm not sure what's missing or in the way of that.

      2. 1

        Yeah, kind of a "posting into the void" thing. Glad you're thinking about this :)

  102. 2

    Qvault (my current indie hack) is competing with codecademy, educative, and freecodecamp. Our only option is to niche down and build something that appeals very strongly to a smaller subset of coding learners. We've basically leaned hard into CS content and a tightknit Discord community

  103. 2

    Hi all,

    I am developing Doppio.

    Big competitors are Mentimeter, & Sliido, but honestly, their experience is so poor, that I think I can (and have) do it better. I can’t wait to open up the Beta soon. It’s taken me far too long to get to this stage, as I’ve been developing for a while but emigrated from the UK to Australia and had a kid in that time, and changed my main gig twice… So a few distractions!

    It adds interaction directly into presentation platforms like Google Slides (Only one I support at the moment). You can stand up experiences like live polls, word-clouds, let someone in the audience take over the slide, and more.

    Can’t wait to get some people using it!

  104. 2

    Working on https://repozix.com 🥳 a reporting tool for marketing and social media data 👌 and competing with some big players in the area like 💪:

    # Google Data Studio backed by Google ♛
    # Power BI backed by Microsoft ♚
    # Tableau ♞ and many other tools on the market ♟

  105. 2

    With our product, Wide Angle Analytics (https://wideangle.co), we are in competition with Google Analytics and numerous challengers. Most notably Matomo.

    This is quite an interesting space to operate it.

    On one hand, Google is a household brand, and it is hard to compete with its inertia.
    But at the same time, based on acquired experience, we know how to compete with them.

    The market is also large enough to find plenty of satisfied customers.

  106. 2

    Kizie.co is competing with Twitter 😄

  107. 2

    Building a serverless platform in the browser at https://bluegenie.co

    There's overlap with:

  108. 2

    well, we at www.wickedtemplates.com are competing with a too many and huge ones.

    we still get our part, but is very difficult to compete against teams of more than five when we are only two..

  109. 2

    We are working on https://zoto.app. Competing with Loom and Vidyard

  110. 2

    Product:

    I make a backup and sync program, the largest competitor is DropBox.

    Own lane:

    I'm making a completely free tier where you provide the storage yourself and don't have to even register an account if you don't want to.

  111. 2

    Stock investment service: https://weeklystocktip.com

    Our big competitor is Motley Fool. Even though they refuse to even tell you about their past performance lol.

  112. 2

    I've built a flashcards app called Fresh Cards for macOS and iOS. Really, my main competitor is Anki, which is technically free (the author charges for the iOS version) and extremely popular. I suppose there's also Quizlet and other online flashcard apps.

    The biggest difficulty is that whenever I post about it, everyone wants to know how it compares to Anki. There is a very strong fanbase for that app, and so a lot of haters come out of the woodwork to question why my app even exists.

    When I first released it about a year and a half ago, I was still trying to figure out the "voice" of the app, but nowadays I'm starting to find it. In terms of features, I'm starting to innovate in the space in my own ways, but I still need to do better at communicating it to potential customers.

    Speaking of which, like a lot of devs, I do very little marketing. (My excuse to myself is this is a side project and not my main job.) I definitely need to improve on the marketing and "message" of the app so people get what makes it unique and better.

    1. 1

      Any intentions to go beyond iOS/Mac?

      1. 1

        I'd like to eventually build an Android or Windows version, but nothing concrete at the moment.

  113. 1

    We're building into an interesting space, at a weird time - For us at Clevenue we're going up against new businesses that have a tonne of funding, or people that are really established that solves for a parallel but only distant-related problem.

    As much as it might seem like funding is a great idea, I would hate to have to drive massive results in this current market.

    There's needs and money, but it's not a decent time to be handcuffed to growth goals.

  114. 1

    Yes we are competing against Vellum and Vercel who have 10M+ in funding whereas we have 0 😅

    We are called contentable.ai and we are making it easy to compare AI models before you adopt it in your business. Vercel which is a big player jumped on to the AI hype and launched a product similar to ours but the good thing is that its not their primary focus whereas its our primary focus so we can build for our customers needs.

    1. 1

      Wow! this looks awesome! Are you looking for more people to get involved? I'd love to be a part of this.

    2. 1

      Some time ago Hertz launched an ad which read "We are No.2 which is why we try harder", the No.1 being Avis.

    3. 1

      Hey @pratiks, I am an NLP data scientist who oftens have to do the same in my work. I would be happy to review your product and provide feedback 🙂

      1. 1

        Hi @NeelD thank you so much for the offer to review the product. We have recently made lots of changes and would love to get some feedback. What would be the best way? zoom? email? loom? Looking forward to your feedback

  115. 1

    Yo, so idk about competing on product,

    but i launched LinkCollect on product hunt yesterday and later realised openAI did a launch as well on the same day lol, no chance of #1 , we are at #6 now, maybe bad choice of day to launch

  116. 1

    My first ever comment has to be within this thread. Great question. Common problem and situation for all of us.

    When it comes to face-to-face competition - we're against Airtable, Google Sheets or Pabbly. Even though none of these offers the same connectivity, advanced features and trully no-code UI.

    Then we got the second group of competition - iPaaS - Integration Platform as a Service. BUT - we got Integration Engine by Make built-in to our product. So the only valid competition within this group is Zapier, n8n and couple of smaller players with less then 1k integrations. Often local products, not known globally.

    Our biggest issue might be something else than competition - weird, right? I feel like often we are just ahead of the market and end consumers. Companies still don't fully understand the need of data centralization, standardization and synchronization.

    We live in a CLOUD age and we'd rather still connect our tools one by one rather than make the one SSOT (Single Source of Truth) and solve all the issues from one place.

    Well, let's wait till the market is fully ready, right? We'll be there.

  117. 1

    I am entering into the note-taking space. There are many, many giant competitors.

    • Obviously, there are tech giants established in this space including Google, Apple, Microsoft with their suite of productivity apps.
    • There are also major players like Evernote, Notion, Craft, and many more that are completely dedicated to having a note taking app.

    So.. Why do I feel like this category is a good idea?

    For starters, "note-taking" is such a broad category that literally almost every app in the productivity space offers it in some form, whether that's as a collaborative document, a markdown editor, a whiteboard, something that doubles as a task manager, something that doubles as a calendar, or something that doubles as a calendar AND a task manager.

    And yet, I feel as if NOTHING on the market today offers the kind of note taking behavior I am looking for. I've signed up for dozens of apps, and none have given me a satisfactory experience where I feel like my creativity is not limited by the interface.

    I believe that while entering such a large market is difficult, it's not impossible. It's an opportunity to innovate and carve a niche. I am confident that many people will feel the way I do about the competition, and that I can solve their note taking problem.

    My solution is an infinite canvas app that gives you the flexibility of a whiteboard, but is as easy to work with as a word document, and as organized as a relational database. Not an easy UX problem to solve, but something I'm making progress on day by day. As far as I have researched, nothing on the market comes close to solving this problem.

  118. 1

    I'm competing with Quickbooks, Xero, Zoho, Frappebooks basically any Accounting (bookkeeping) app out there. My approach is purely API allowing the user to decide the interface on their own. My product is called microbooks.

  119. 1

    We compete with Stripe Atlas, Doola, and Firstbase for non-US founders of US LLCs.
    Our product: https://neubase.co/

  120. 1

    we do! like we competing with every crm erp and hrm system around the world! also linkedin xd

  121. 1

    I’m competing with Mailgun and Sendgrid (sort of)

    Still a very very small player in the field, but had many make the switch because they liked my product better.

    My product: Kingmailer.co
    SMTP service for SaaS e and e-commerce

  122. 1

    Im competing with Crisp and Intercom with https://www.echofox.io/

    Main difference ATM is I am competing on price to build initial momentum, then the core difference will come from what I learn from talking to customers.

  123. 1

    I am if you're still looking for people.

    Currently building Atribusi to solve marketing analytics. I'll do an interview or answer questions.

  124. 1

    Hey, love your post!

    Our product is called Salable. We are a bunch of developers who have come up with this product to help everyone who has an app or an app idea and needs help in setting up a SaaS business. We help you set up subscriptions, licensing, pricing tables, and payment providers and offer single SDKs and APIs. Setting up a SaaS business should not be complex or confusing - we want to help people get started, grow and be successful simply and conveniently.

    While they are not direct competitors, our closest are Stripe and Lemon Squeezy!

    1. 1

      Nice. Never heard of Salable but good to see such products. What's the URL?

      1. 2

        Thank you! We are fairly new on indie hackers so it's not allowing me to publish any links yet :(. Our URL is under my profile page though. Otherwise, if you search for Salable in Google we should come up first. We are Salable app. Hope you find us :). We are re-designing our website at the moment, but most of the info should be good to give you an idea of our product. Thank you :)

        1. 1

          Just a heads up but your chatbox on the bottomright blocks part of the consent popup in certain resolutions.

        2. 1

          Thankyou. I am adding it Salable link here so that it will help you.

          1. 1

            thank you so much, really appreciate that!

  125. 1

    Awesome post! I'm the founder of AiMakr, a free-to-testdrive NoCode AI platform for custom solutions - www.aimakr.io. Check it out, any feedback is much appreciated!

  126. 1

    Glad to see a post like this! I'm the founder of Heights Platform. We're an AI-powered course creation and community building software. We are bootstrapped and have been around for 5~ years now (but started as a web design studio in 2009).

    We have a number of massive VC backed competitors who have teams 20x the size of ours.

    Two big things impact how we are able to craft our own lane:

    1. We can out-innovate. We're the only product among our competitors that has an integrated AI-copilot assistant that can answer your questions and edit settings of your products for you (Shopify who isn't a competitor, but is in a similar space being a platform, announced something similar recently. Even as a small bootstrapped team, we beat them to market by months.) In addition to that, we also built the first autonomous coach for creators. Essentially, we're giving our customers their own AI team to help them grow.

    2. Use your unique constraints to your advantage. We don't have investor money burning a hole in our pocket so we aren't aggressively hiring or spending $3k to acquire new customers for the sake of "growth". What we can do is engage with our customers on a deeper level. As the founder, I do a weekly podcast with our customers and other creators, and we provide a much more personal level of support. Figure out what you can do that your big competitors can't or won't and invest effort there.

  127. 1

    Currently working on a web app for screenwriters to submit their script and exchange feedback with other screenwriters. I was looking for their alternatives but found really bad ones based on UI/UX alone, and then I encountered Coverfly and Blcklst which literally has vetted industry professionals giving notes to their users. So now I'm taking a peer-to-peer and more community based approach that focuses on 'exchanging' feedback rather than just submitting scripts.

  128. 1

    Building https://fitworkoutroutine.com, an ios fitness app. The big guys i'm against are Fitbod and Strong. The thing I'm offering is not an AI driven workout, but catering to the workouts that a user know they wanna do. If you already know what you want to exercise, then my app lets you find similar exercises or plan the exercises you enjoy doing.

  129. 1

    I develop Magic Lasso Adblock - it's an ad blocker for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.

    There are a lot of competitors in this space, but I managed to launch when there were relatively few good ad blockers available for Safari. This ensured initial traction and downloads. Then a lot of ongoing hard work ensured that the initial traction could be developed into ongoing growth.

    From a product perspective, I'm always trying to stay true to the key product attribute and cater for our specific market. In our case, it's as an easy to use, fast and efficient ad blocker that doesn't require a lot of manual configuration – pretty much set and forget.

  130. 1

    I have a couple of big competitors now. They started small like me, but grew so much faster. I have a vision for my product and just continue on that path. The idea is that I make the most flexible upvote, roadmap, and changelog tool.

  131. 1

    Ooh, yeah. In the same boat as you guys. Competing against enterprise-scaled companies in my niche of email signature management with BOOMSIG (https://boomsig.com).

    Tough, for sure. Especially as a solopreneur, bootstrapped and having to go against companies with full-on marketing teams with budget, sales-guys chasing quotas and hitting up everybody in-market.

    The only thing, I can see where I can excel and "craft my own lane", is just that: being a solopreneur and bootstrapped. I can go as slow or fast, as I chose, I can turn the product, messaging and approach around the way I see fit and really adapt to the needs of my target audience.

    Also, I believe my product is not even directly competing with my competitors. People talking to my competitors would not implement my SaaS. But up-and-comers and smaller scale companies do (and the competition is too expensive for them and their pain points).

  132. 1

    I'm building SendReaction it's an automatic product analytics tool that doesn't cost a ton to scale and actually doesn't require engineers to maintain.

    It's directly competing with Heap and Pendo who I honestly think are great products, but they price everyone out once you scale even a little bit.

    I believe I have found an interesting workaround to this problem and that makes SendReaction really really affordable. So hopefully folks agree when they get to try it out. (private beta currently)

  133. 1

    I’m building EmbedQuiz.com, it’s a quiz maker for teachers and businesses. My direct competitors are Involve.me and Typeform, and many other platforms with much larger capital.

    Interestingly, I find it advantageous to have big competitors, since because of them people know that online quiz makers exist and they are actively searching for the solution of their problems. At least I don’t have to tell them why a quiz maker is good… they are already know this!

    Most of my users are searching for quiz makers on Google or Reddit, find my website and if they found the features good enough, they start using it. I don’t think any of them would consider using one of my competitors sofware, just because they are larger companies. My users are only interested in features, UX and of course pricing.

    Having said that, EmbedQuiz is still a small software and maybe in the future it will cause much trouble to have competitors, when we are competing for a larger number of users, but currently I only see it as an advantage.

  134. 1

    We here at ConveyThis are going against giants like Weglot and WPML. We are small but are confident in our affordability, reliability, and excellent customer support :)

  135. 1

    I just launched SilentFlip.com which is an affordable competitor to LaunchDarkly and others.
    I believe that feature flags should not cost 100$+ if you are a solopreneur, or a small startup.

  136. 1

    Here's to the little guy 🍻 - Signed up to the newsletter, this is the content i need to stay focused on.

    I'm looking to make Upwork & Fiverr sweat buckets..

  137. 1

    We're a software in HR Tech, which is one of the biggest red oceans.

    We're going with AI directly to the top 2% innovators but we have great competitors still scaling like Personio, Teamtailor, Factorial, etc.

    In Clous App we take a different approach, which is selling to businesses while maximizing the recruiting experience of HR professionals and candidates.

    1. 1

      Nice. It's a crowded space but it has money. Love to see the link and what stage are you in? With paying customers?

      1. 1

        Here it is https://clous.app

        We're still in the development phase of our product. Launching 23rd August

        PS: website being revamped right now

  138. 1

    Are you tired of juggling between multiple SaaS products to manage your business? Look no further! Our CRM software combines all the essential tools you need to streamline your business operations into one convenient platform.

    Say goodbye to the hassle of switching between contact management software, social media marketing tools, task management applications, e-commerce platforms, and event management systems. With our all-in-one solution, you can manage all aspects of your business seamlessly, saving you time and increasing your productivity.

    Our team has been working tirelessly to develop and perfect our CRM software, and we are proud to say that we are almost ready to launch. We are excited to offer this game-changing solution to business owners and entrepreneurs who are looking to take their businesses to the next level.

    Don't miss out on the opportunity to simplify your business operations and increase your efficiency. Contact us today to learn more about our CRM software and how it can benefit your business. Together, we can make your business dreams a reality.

    Anyone interested, please contact me.
    [email protected]

  139. 1

    Definitely. I'm building a tool against Notion, OneNote, Obsidian, Pocket and so on =)))))) My team and I are building a personal knowledge management tool that can help you save all of your fav photos or PDFs or even TikTok videos. Our app is a bit different from the current popular ones because you can store not just notes and web links, but also photos, videos, audio, PDFs and documents. The search function is more intuitive, so you can search for things like "A picture of dog drawing" or "A song mummy dont know daddy's getting hot", for example (You don't need to remember the date or the exact name). We're really focused on making the process of storing information as simple and quick as possible.

    P/s: If you're interested in being one of the first users of our product when it launches, feel free to shoot me a DM with your email. I'd love to keep you in the loop!

  140. 1

    Definitely - going up technically against, iMessage, Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc. etc.

    Although we're taking a different twist to our approach, focusing primarily on audio messages! We think people should get talking a bit more, so that's the goal... build something that's easier and more fun to just chat instead of only text.

    appstore.tapedeck.co

  141. 1

    Great topic. I love David and Goliath. Olo is competing with Calm and Headspace. We position it as instant stress relief for non-meditators. https://olo.space

    1. 1

      Oh! I've worked on a feature for Headspace as a product designer and I have to say lots of the churn that was happening was due to paywalls amongst other things in the user/task flow. That's really cool that you guys are coming up with another mental wellness product! They do have a soft spot in my heart!

      1. 2

        Thanks for the comment! Yes, I've been looking at this space since there were cassettes, and I feel like the content and user experience need serious improvement.

  142. 1

    I see you!

    I'm working on www.BlazeSQL.com, and we plan to take on PowerBI and Tableau by allowing non-technical users to get their own data insights.

    Would love some feedback!

  143. 1

    Hey there we are competing with copy.ai and jasper.ai , however we also have voice / speech generation to create engaging conversations and video creation.

    Here is a 3 min demo
    https://www.loom.com/share/8d483fa491cd4a4fb9c72e0fdd6f2fc0

    and here is our site,

    https://app.cloveai.com/

    Hopefully you like it, looking forward to get some feedback

  144. 1

    My current product is overlapping with many big guys like Articulate & canva. Ambition is as big as them, started little steps toward it. Launching it on PH on Monday - https://www.producthunt.com/products/duonut. Need all your support :)

    Earlier I was not comfortable sharing my competitor's names, as I thought people would make fun of me, but got over it and building :)

  145. 1

    I gave up on the idea of being unique a long time ago. The goal with my latest project (www.fusedhr.com) is to be cheaper and more focused than the existing products.

  146. 1

    From start I've taken on big boys, direct competition had 500k€ head start vs mine 0 :D Without investments my SaaS project couldn't compete so it stayed small regardless that it had better features for less pay. You can check it yourself here https://qpointsurvey.com/

  147. 1

    Competing with the millions of AI startups that launched recently!

  148. 1

    While https://workarise.com/ provides project management and communication tools such as email, GANTT chart design, productivity and project execution reports, and calendar, there are many competitors in the market such as Asana, Trello, Monday.com, Basecamp, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. However, our platform stands out due to our all-in-one solution that simplifies project management and communication. We continuously improve our user-friendly, customizable, and scalable platform based on customer feedback and provide exceptional support and service to attract new customers.

  149. 1

    Wow, it's impressive that you write about Micro SaaS Ideas every week! Your app Flezr sounds interesting, and it's great to see that you're taking on big players like Webflow and Wordpress. As for competitors, I'm currently working on a project called Boostit, which is a social media management platform for small businesses. Our biggest competitor is Hootsuite, but we're differentiating ourselves by focusing on simplicity and ease-of-use, as well as providing more affordable pricing options. It's definitely a challenge to carve out our own lane in a crowded market, but we're working hard to provide unique value to our customers.

  150. 1

    I'm building AI Keytalk (https://www.mycelebs.com/keytalk/) which is an AI vertical search system or recommendation, personalization solution. Big players in this field include Loop 54, Algolia, and Celebros. We believe that we can be better than these bigger players when it comes to the quality of semantic analysis, and because we automated operations.

    To craft our own lane, we have a much more affordable pricing point and we're focusing on nailing down one industry at at time!

    I wish all of you guys massive success here 🙏

  151. 1

    I built a product in stealth that allows businesses to instantly purchase 100% clean energy, without needing to invest in solar farms, or wind farms. Just fill out a form, and the tech connects to the relevant whole-seller of clean energy. As long as the company is connected to the grid, we can direct 100% clean energy to the buyers.

    I managed to make some good relationships with whole sellers of energy, and 1 particularly big whole seller has taken a liking to me, the product and its vision.

    The company is in stealth, because I want to really establish my footprint, and as per advice of my partner ( the big whole-seller), its the best strat. Penetrate the market, get a nice foothold, really prove concept that start beating the drums of success.

    I am the only dev, building and managing the entire trading platform. In an existential sense, we really are going against all the energy traders in the US, and also Oil and gas companies, they are vicious haha.

    I wish I could share the progress more in detail with the community, as I think it would be fun. Once we launch publicly, I hope to. But for now you guys are stuck with my other smaller site projects haha!

    The nice thing is, the current market is literally trading energy using phone calls, and emails. A unified platform will present a seamless experience for everyone in the industry.

    Even then, as an avid fan of buildinpublic, I will share my progress, without naming names and giving away unnecessary info!

  152. 1

    I'm building Delve (https://delvedeep.in) -- tools to help builders learn what their users actually want. The "big guys" in this space are heymarvin, fireflies.ai, Dovetail, and others. It's a very crowded space but it seems like everyone generally is trying to solve the same part of the user research process, which is an in-depth discovery or usability interview over zoom.

    I don't want to build just another version of their software, so I'm evaluating other parts of the user research process currently to see if there are problems worth solving. Right now, my product is too similar to theirs to stand a chance.

    I think the "formal user interview" space will be won by one of these bigger players, so as an IndieHacker I'm trying to wedge myself into the market at a different entry point and then I can grow from there.

  153. 1

    We're competing with Bing Chat with https://franks.ai, super tough..

  154. 1

    I'm building https://getoutput.io - We're your CFO & Finance Team.

    Competing against all the big 4, and large accounting firms that don't do the right job for small-medium size businesses and indie hackers.

    We do your finances, contracts, procurement and automations. You get more time back, faster decisions, and profitable growth.

    All the services to grow your business as a subscription.

  155. 1

    I'm building Fingertipps. An online platform that allows small business owners create free and customizable ecommerce websites.

    I'm taking on Shopify, and creating a simpler and more user friendly solution.

    1. 1

      Can you share your website? I am curious to learn more.

  156. 1

    I built Simple Giveaways, a WordPress plugin for giveaways and after a few years, the team being Awesome Motive (owns WPBeginner and a range of popular WordPress plugins) launched RafflePress.

    My growth immediately stopped & while still the free version has around 1k active installs, their plugin wento 10k+ installs within months.

    They have a marketing team behind and such while I am a "company of one" and since bills have to be paid, I can't focus 100% of my time to it :D

    I did get a lot of positive reviews/opinions, even from people coming to my plugin from RafflePress since it's built different with different features so I am more focused on the "customer relationship" here since they get a direct contact with the founder (me) :D

  157. 1

    Fly high on your fundraising journey with my pitch deck templates! I also create company profile templates, financial model templates, etc. View full product catalog - https://airpitch.gumroad.com/

  158. 1

    I'm currently competing with the big players in the hiring space; Upwork, Toptal, Turing, and Braintrust. You can even say the big players in the staffing space.

    I'm building www.bluesaturn.io, a fully-verifiable talent platform to decrease the friction behind hiring technical talent. It's pretty exciting going up against the giants.

  159. 1

    soon starting my first web-app.
    image & video sharing, cannot tell too much right now.

    I guess you have to find a
    a) very good name (domain) &
    b) prepare everything on social media, to have at least a tiny fraction of a chance.

  160. 1

    I've been working on https://turbolink.io, a SaaS that allows users to sell self-hosted content securely, for less.

  161. 1

    My previous two SaaS companies (ContentStudio.io and Replug.io) which I bootstrapped to 7-figure ARR are competing with Buffer, Hootsuite, etc.

    ContentStudio is a unified social media management platform, and Replug is a link management solution.

    My third SaaS company is in the analytics space Usermaven.com, so we have a few big guns in this space: Google Analytics, Pendo, and Heap.

  162. 1

    We are working on enabling Indians to reach their financial goals faster by helping them invest better. Traditionally, Indians have been significantly under-invested in the capital markets i.e. equities, and mutual funds either because they do not know where to start or they invest inefficiently. Our all-in-one solutions offer personalised investment portfolios to the investor. We are taking on big banks/wealth firms who have often neglected our audience.

    We are Daulat and you can find us here: https://daulat.co.in

  163. 1

    Well, we just created a small Github bot which we had planned to scale on a much later date. But just launched it on PH to get some feedback. Apparently, a really Big tech giant didn't like it too much and warned us that we were infringing on their IP.
    We literally made it in like 2-3 days and it was a very casual build, didn't know these companies were so on edge lol.

  164. 1

    I’m working on a transcription startup (https://www.essencescriber.com/) with the objective of actually not sending you into deep debt for people who want to take notes from a video with pictures, get the key information from a video without spending ages, or for marketers, making great articles out of videos. (I personally had this problem, when I wanted to look through a video’s content without paying $1.50 per minute for only text). Our biggest competitor is all the other well-established transcription services.

    It was a challenge due to the fact that it’s quite a small niche targeting mainly students who a lot unfortunately may still find $0.50 per use hard to afford.

  165. 1

    Yes and no. I built an online fitness tracker (https://keeptract.com/#/) with the objective of helping those who sign-up actually improve their health and fitness. This is an important distinction because the "big guys" like FitBit, Whoop, Apple Watch are driven to sell their product to as many people as possible with little regard to the actual effectiveness. (I know this because people who use wearables don't actually get results; the wearable is designed to trick them into believing that they do).

    It's been a challenge because so many in fitness buy-in to "the more data the better"; however, I've help myself and few others create a personal relationship with fitness and I'd rather my product actually help 3 people than take money from 3000 who never actually log in to their accounts.

  166. 1

    We are taking on big guys within our niche. In our case, we've started a new outdoor K9 gear company called DOGPAK that ultimately competes with a company like Ruffwear. Our first main product is a better fitting dog backpack that offers a few advantages over those built by Ruffwear: https://dogpak.com

  167. 1

    I am building https://sendnet.io
    Taking on MailChimp SendinBlue et al.
    Competing mainly on price (10x cheaper) and simplicity of design

  168. 1

    Just working on an app to take on realestate.com.au and zillow.com (there's many all over the world like trulia, etc.) but I think a 'social map x livestreaming x next-door' chat app which has things like polls, cameo integration and live reactions + games (guess the price) will do amazingly well.

    The easiest (and obvious) area of expansion is 'diy videos and hire a tradie/ renovator/ repair person' via video reviews, as well as (eventually) add referral links (e.g. if someone drives past your house and likes your lawn, you can (if both registered) click the lawn and earn affiliate comms if the person then goes and books the same person as you. etc.

    Similarly, Q&A, local neighbourhood chatrooms etc, and other eventual options (try before you buy, or 'make an offer on an airbnb/ rental' or swap rentals) etc.

    Just working on it now, the closest (kind of) thing I can think of is playhouse.so (which I think is limited to the Bay Area - I'm from Sydney Aus btw) but again, not really paying attention to that as I have 10-12 years of experience in real estate/ property, and 3 years of woodwork/diy building tinyhomes and learning the inside out of all 'that side of things' so rather focus on my stuff.

    The website will be rekn.com (I own the domain) and will also use livestreamed.com for promotional redirection to the live auctions etc. : )

    1. 1

      So yeah, trying to take on zillow/ trulia/ realestate.com.au/ domain.com.au, starting with realestate/domain in Australia and expanding out :)

      Focusing on property auctions, livestreaming, 'digital wallet' for your own property info (so you can easily transfer it to the next buyer which'll include things like home logbook, warranty notes, manuals and certificates), and then expand into home services and marketplace or other things related to homes : )

      1. 1

        rekn stands for

        real knowledge or
        real estate knowledge network

  169. 1

    We are creating a chat application where you can learn a language by chatting with friends. The translations are done automatically so you can type in your native language. Basically our competitors are DuoLingo and Whatsapp (wish us luck :|) but we do have a unique selling point.

  170. 1

    Competing with some large names like Mentimeter and Slido (a Cisco company) in audience engagement tools:
    https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pollup

    Although PollUp has a different approach to these tools by adding a layer with social media, it's going to be though getting market share from these guys. But as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained!

  171. 1

    I also have some ideas for "big guy competition (think trustpilot)." Glad to see I am not alone!

  172. 1

    Same here. I'm also trying to sell a product which is highly competitive - powerpoint presentation templates - pitch decks, company profiles & other business presentations. I am confident with the quality of my templates and too optimistic to lose confidence :D
    Do checkout my templates and let me know how you feel about it - https://airpitch.gumroad.com/

  173. 1

    Helping build a production company with other specialized services that compete with mammoths in the industry.

    We are using automation and data analytics unlike the big guys in this industry to become much more efficient, and we're developing powerful differentiators that make us a no-brainer to work with.

    We're taking unbeaten paths to become a force to reckon with.

  174. 1

    I'm competing with the big guys too! In our case, it's Loom. We're trying to build a screen recording tool, focusing on optimizing for async communications. We have a killer feature that allows users to rewind any mistakes they've made in a recording, but Loom are so ahead in their features that it forces to prioritize on WHICH features matter the most.

    1. 1

      This actually sounds useful!

  175. 1

    I'm also trying to compete with big guys. But it caused me a lot of focus shifting. Because when I started I saw many holes and opportunities. So I took them but by the time I got project started and I was about to implement the given features (Linktree - monetisation/store, Buy me coffee - store) they got them done. But I'm trying to find something new and going for it. You can see my small project here: quickg.eu

  176. 1

    I am competing with PSA, Beckett, SGC in the trading card market. Although, I have recently started to position myself as a market attractiveness tool. So, although I compete with them the product, Flygrade, should increase overall customers in the space.

  177. 1

    Our multi-cloud storage manager MVP is coming up soon: https://cloudcombo.app/

    We are competing with MultCloud (https://www.multcloud.com/), which has been operating for 10+ years in the market.

    We are making sure we tackle all their weak spots!

  178. 1

    We launched our Kanban project management tool Teamhood a few years back. But our biggest competitors remain to be Jira, Trello, and Asana.
    What helps to attract our customers and differentiate Teamhood from other solutions is defining our strengths and creating a product for our ideal ICP. We focus on the smaller, more specified niche of users that want a Kanban-first application with excellent project management capabilities.

  179. 1

    A little late lol, but Evoke is competing with OpenAI and Hugging Face as an AI as a service.

    Main focus is getting open source AI on the cloud for developers making AI apps.

    Our main benefit over Hugging face are more optimized models and flexible, cheaper, pricing for the same speed and throughput.

    As for OpenAI? We'll just have more AI models that do various tasks and release much quicker.

  180. 1

    We are competing with LANDING AI (Landing Lens) for computer visio model development. We are going to releasing our product comparion with theirs soon, in terms of required data, training time and accuracy.

    Please stay tuned if you are interested.

    1. 1

      Definitely interested! Do you have a twitter? Would love to keep track of your project. Here's mine: https://twitter.com/TheRealEtch

      1. 1

        Hey Richard, thanks for the reply! Haha will PM you on twitter

  181. 1

    We are competing with big guys but as the small player we know our target audience might also be a small player who can't afford the big guy. So that's where we see our chances for market entry.

  182. 1

    I don't really call it "competing" because there are particular things we both do well, but technically in the broadest definition, our spreadsheet app (subset.so) competes with Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets

  183. 1

    I just announced my new startup https://maxtravel.app! Travel has some really big players. I'm on the fence about how much I should lean into "us vs them" comparisons, or "play nice". We're just getting started, but it's fun to think that someday one of the big guys might want to acquire us ;) thoughts?

  184. 1

    I am in a similar space as you (no-code site builder) but niched down into serving a single kind of user. I tried to think of a space where customers would want to create a fairly specific kind of site where I could offer a better builder for that specific use-case than squarespace/wordpress.

    So that is my strategy, serve a very small part of a large flexible companies user base for cheaper and with a more targeted product.

    BTW your landing page is way better than mine and your stuff looks clean! I think you will need to make your on-boarding flow more exciting once you are ready, letting users interact with my product before they even enter their email felt right for me.

    Also I would love to pick your brain about what your approach to letting users register domains and automating the domain registration -> update DNS records -> hosting HTML was. I have a cobbled together solution using AWS cloudfront but it feels messy haha.

  185. 1

    Some have hopes that they will get acquired LOL

  186. 1

    Well, there are some big players out there but none is solving the problem the way we do. Once we launch we will have complete autonomy for founders and complete freedom for devs, all in one place.

    Our claim is that ANYONE can create SaaS fast and under $1K, production ready at scale :-) So we created a SaaS Creation Platform.

  187. 1

    When we launch, we’ll be competing with Meta but our advantage is that we’re targeting a niche market while they’re building a more generalized product. This is in the AR space by the way.

  188. 1

    We have the idea to compete with one big guy which is the closest to our product, luckily we can read reviews to see what their doing wrong and right which will help us provide a better experience.

  189. 1

    Not yet but we have the intention to do so.

  190. 1

    ILLA Cloud - We are trying to compete with Retool and appsmith.
    We are an open-source low-code platform. Here is our repo: https://github.com/illacloud/illa-builder

    We are still in a very early stage and try to develop more cool and great features!

  191. 1

    seeyo.info - we are competing with linktree, linkinbio and taplink

  192. 1

    With www.wookees.com, we taking on videoask. We still are at an early stage and have few paying customers.

  193. 1

    Not competing per se, but at The Storyletter we are trying to augment the traditional publishing industry by platforming independent creators with basic tools and methods to get their work in front of more customers/readers.

    A lot of indie writers can feel defeated if they aren't getting any traction, so we'd like to help in some way, at least in the speculative fiction realm.

    Thanks for the topic and opportunity to share!! Looks like there are a lot of great devs and creators in this thread.

  194. 1

    Hi, Upen!
    We know how you feel, our biggest competitors are asana, Dropbox, Trello, ClickUp, and Monday. All the big GIANTS! :D

    It's gonna be an all-in-one digital office for teams and individuals to manage their work and collaborate in real time.

    Our website- https://www.twigex.com/

    For now, we have finished -
    -file storage (where you can store large files, open, create and edit documents together in real-time)
    -project management (our biggest strength is that every project field is fully customizable, you can create labels, checkboxes, dropdown menus, etc. - it's made to fit any workflow. Also, it's drag&drop to make it simple to use, so you don't get overwhelmed by all the complex features.)

    Tomorrow we will launch a FREE self-hosted version. But later our goal is to give users the freedom to choose which data center they want to store their data, so it never gets sold to third parties. We want people to feel safe and sure about where is their data.

  195. 1

    I am working on https://zifront.com

    It is a Chatbot and Live chat software for lead generation and website visistor engagement.

  196. 1

    Competing with Airtable, Retool, Xano, Google Sheets:

    vertex.io

    A no-code database + backend that lets you instantly create new or connect existing databases with an Airtable-like UX. Based on Postgres and offers SQL access.

    1. 1

      That's quite interesting. I use Xano extensively for one of my clients. Would love to learn more. Have applied for access.

  197. 1

    launched https//searchstartupjopbs.com in october, with a Product Hunt tomorrow.

    Taking on Built In and AngelList for becoming the one site with all startup jobs, from bootstrapped to unicorns

  198. 1

    Founder's Choice (https://founderschoice.co) is a blog dedicated to sharing startups, which will compete with TechCrunch among other entrepreneurial news sources.
    The difference is that FC won't share tech news but rather guidance on building a startup. I think the two go hand-in-hand appropriately.
    For others competing against "big guys," I want to also add that it's a bad mindset to adopt a "there can be only one" attitude. There is plenty of market share available for everyone to succeed in most markets.

  199. 1

    I run an animation studio called Pixel Bakery (https://pixelbakery.com).

    Our biggest competitor is Fiverr, so we're standing in the shadow of giants. We create marketing videos for software, CPG, and educational brands. It's almost worked out as a nice filter, in a weird way. Fiverr generally charges in the hundred dollar range, and we charge in the $10k range. The people that don't want to spend any money are generally not our target demo anyways.

  200. 1

    Just launched https://creasquare.io
    It's a social media management software, but we are focused on providing content creation tools, and a better interface!

    Competing with the likes of Canva, Adobe, Hootsuite, Sprout Social - but staying positive!

  201. 1

    We are an open source low-code platform to help people to build internal tools in minutes.
    Product links :
    GitHub repo: https://github.com/illa-family/illa-builder
    Website: https://www.illa.cloud/

    Our big competitors: PowerApps, AppSmith, and Retool.

    Our Unique Features:
    ⚽ Real-time Collaboration: You can build with your teammates in real-time together.
    🎨 Powered by ILLA Design: Components should not constrain your imagination.
    📲iIntegrate with data sources: Connect to the mainstream databases or any data that can be connected through APIs

  202. 1

    CLI that generates GraphQL back-end, custom admin like you would have written it yourself with react-query (not a generic solution like react-admin), custom react hooks for: list, detail and forms views.

    Product link: usegenerated.com

    Biggest competitors:

    AWS Amplify
    

    Competitive advantage:

    1. not AWS
    2. not AWS- so cheaper
    3. deploy anywhere

    Disclaimer: it's still WIP

  203. 1

    I am doing the impossible. My Goliaths are Mailchimp, Sendgrid etc

    I am building a email marketing software that can send super cheap email newsletters using Amazon SES. Its called SendNet.io
    It can do a lot of the expected stuff that the big guys do at one tenth the cost! so thats my lane.

    Hey atleast I have a good looking domain name! lets see where this goes, shall we?

  204. 1

    We're a webapp that allows you to organise your travels with an easy trello-like interface but that also offers map capabilities, embedded image search etc.

    Product link: https://travelboard.app

    Biggest Competitors:
    Wanderlog, tripMapper

    Competitive Advantage:

    • Better interface
    • Price is a one off payment per travel rather than a subscription, for only $5
    • Privacy Focused
    1. 1

      this sounds super interesting!

  205. 1

    We're on a mission to improve the DX of developers building and deploying to managed services such as AWS, GCP, and Azure.

    Product Links: https://deploy.nitric.io & https://nitric.io

    Biggest competitors:
    AWS CDK

    Competitive Advantage:
    We're aiming to strike the right level of abstraction - the balance between control and convenience. CDK offers more control, however, this makes the learning curve steeper and exposes a lot more configuration minutia to the developer.

    We focus on human-readable documentation and provide APIs which solve for the majority of use cases (the framework is open source, so the edge cases can always be solved for by extending the SDKs).

    We're also focused on the idea of zero config, so we're working to expand the capabilities of our self-provisioning-runtime (we automatically figure out the infrastructure you need for your application, based on the resources you use and how you intend to use them).

  206. 1

    That meeting could have been an Undiffer update!

    Manage your daily standups faster and track progress better, a-sync or in real-time

    Product Link : https://www.undiffer.com/

    Biggest competitors :

    Clickup
    Status Hero
    Trello

    Advantage :

    Use for Free, up to 50 users, and least fee amongst the competition.

    Very lightweight tool, laser-focused on standup meetings only.

    Issue which we are facing : Please reply in comment for suggestions / ideas

    Building a distribution network to increase signups and test our product

  207. 1

    Made a thing to let people write SEO-optimized article in seconds.

    40-second video demo here in case you wanted to take a look.

    Biggest competitors are likes of Jasper, Copy.ai.

    My sort of USP / competitive advantage is that I focus heavily on the long-form aspect of AI content generation and do a lot of tuning on that. Likewise, I also focus very heavily on a good editor experience for my customers (i.e. using AI-assisted editing and also implementing a semantic keyword frequency suggestion tool like in SEOSurfer's content writer).

  208. 1

    Not sure who we are taking on with codehooks.io - but I guess every service developers use to create backends? Like Firebase/Google, Hasura, MongoDB....

  209. 1

    Competing with JFrog over at https://artifiction.io

    Building entirely on CloudFlare D2, KV and Durable Objects allows us to provide very cheap artifact storage with zero egress costs.

  210. 1

    Here at https://qwurty.com, we're competing with:

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Twitter
    • TikTok
    • Youtube
    • Discord
    • Disqus

    Qwurty. Your social hub.

    Qwurty

    1. 2

      I have checked your product, it's amazing and includes every social media thing.

      I believe why tiktok gets ahead over any other social media app is because they never ask or push for signups to provide comments or likes

  211. 1

    We are competing in a highly saturated market Personal Finance Management apps have a lot of competition and also compete with banks that offer their own tools. Some of our biggest competitors include - Mint, YNAB, and Copilot. Currently trying to figure out our messaging and where/how we can compete www.usemuch.com

  212. 1

    We like to think that we compete with Google Analytics... but we are more about privacy onduis.com 😃

  213. 1

    With www.cfeedback.com we are competing with Canny, Aha!, Uservoice. We want to be simpler and more efficient, less complex and more fluid to work with. Not another platform to enter but well integrated with the ones you already use. At the same time I'm a first time entrepreneur learning and doing at the same time.

  214. 1

    We at oneapp.ly are competing with big guys like LinkedIn and Indeed. Our mission is to make job and university applications easy. We help young talents to find their first job online. If you are looking to hire young, but very talented people please share your vacancy on oneapp.ly
    We are in the beta-testing stage, so it's completely free!

  215. 1

    I'm working with AFFiNE (https://AFFiNE.pro) who are trying to compete against such apps as Notion. It's privacy-focused and open-source. With the rich features it offers, the idea is to simplify your workflow and minimize the amount of apps/services you need.

    This is all great, but we still need to work hard to get people's attention and learn how to properly grow the community. We had a nice launch on GitHub with over 8,000 starts so there's definitely an interest.

    Another issue we have is keeping in touch with the community - we aren't collecting user details and don't have emails - so we try to remain active on social media and currently run Discord and Telegram groups.

    Feedback on the product is super positive - even in this development stage. And we have a roadmap up of where we are going and when features can be expected.

    We just need more people to know us and give us a try.

    1. 1

      Nice try, keep going.

  216. 1

    I'm a co-founder of Hipclip - we use AI to automate podcast and video editing for sales and marketing teams.

    We're competing with Descript. I wouldn't say that they are big but they are really well funded.

    Our key differentiator is that we focus on less technical users (which really impacts product decisions we make and how we think about our user's "happy path" in general.)

    In short, while Descript is building "Figma for video" we are building "Canva for video".

    As an example –

    From our convos w users, we know that content marketers and salespeople don't know how to edit videos and don't want to learn complex professional tools. So they way we approached this problem – we built an editing assistant that suggests them which edits to make.

  217. 1

    A followup post to this that would be super interesting to see - those of you who are competing with the "big guys" – describe in one sentence how you're different.

    As someone who is constantly choosing software providers for my day job (CTO of a startup), I'm constantly struggling to understand the raison d`etre for the various "big guys" alternatives. But that's what I most want to know!

  218. 1

    we're https://unika.network/ (decentralized anonymous identity protocol). main competitors are DID providers, but they're actually not... we do different things that sounds the same

  219. 1

    Competing with the legal industry. mediators.ai helps settling disputes within 7 days.

  220. 1

    pretty cool

    I am building Health Compiler - [https://Healthcompiler.com]

  221. 1

    Nice man, we are competing with each other as well, but let's be friends ❤️

    Our angle is to add AI to generate your website in no time 👉🏻 www.pineapplebuilder.com

  222. 1

    Currently bootstrap building https://anlytics.co A privacy focused alternative to Google Analytics. Looking to compete with other similar big brands with pricing and easy use

  223. 1

    We're up against the Mediums/Substacks of the world. Throw in Hashnode and (ironically) Indie Hackers.....the assignment gets a whole lot tougher.

    But we have a growing user base and a nice niche.

    Leakd enables early-stage entrepreneurs to qualify their business idea, as they discover, publish and monetise quality blog content produced through the Leakd editor.

    https://leakd.co/

  224. 1

    I'm a marketing intern at Gglot.com, a transcription/translation service that's not very well known at the moment. I'm hoping to help bring the site to a top position when the summer is over, and the team I'm working with just finished redesigning the site!

  225. 1

    Lots of questions to get access into this :P

  226. 1

    I am building Valosan https://valosan.com to help founders and PR & Comms pros to get brand awareness and get earned media for their startup. Competes with gains like Cision, MeltWater, and MuckRack.

  227. 1

    I'm building www.fanfeed.co which helps people take control of their social media addiction.

    Not a direct competitor, but it is a substitute for scrolling twitter and YouTube...

  228. 1

    I work for a user-friendly AI-powered video editing software Nova A.I. Mostly we are trying to work on SEO as it brings us the most users, although not many are paying at the moment in the end - traffic is free.

    Unfortunately, our incredible software developers are stuck in Ukraine at the moment... Managing to still do some coding during these crazy times in their country...

    Our top competitors are (well-developed online presence):
    veed
    filmora
    kapwing
    movavi

    Our team is super small 3 sales and marketing + 3 hackers writing a magnificent code for a revolutionary software.

    Any tips would be extremely helpful!

  229. 1

    I work for VetrinaLive, 0% transaction Fee e-commerce platform for small businesses.

    VetrinaLive competing with Shopify!

    www.vetrinalive.com

  230. 1

    I am working on WannaGo :) https://www.iwannagoapp.com/ , its a platform to meet and collaborate with other users across the world , based on a specific activity such as watching anime, coding or designing. Real time collaboration - chat, video, text built into the browser.

    Its small groups (2-6) of , no strings attached , productive peers actually doing work together and participating. With a reptutation system im working on to ensure quality collaborators rise to the top.

    My Competitors:
    -Meetups
    -Facebook
    -Old Friends (because we want our users to make new - BETTER friends :P )
    -Revenue Generation (lol :p)

    • Zoom
    • Other collaboration software

    Differentiator:
    Whereas in Meetups and other events apps, people normally congregate around shared "interests" and theres usually a main organizer who is broadcasting information, while the rest of the big group is extremely passive.

  231. 1

    Working at an influencer marketing startup (https://www.ubiquitousinfluence.com/) that's about a year old. Got some nice funding but taking on some big players in the space (Grin, Mavrck, #paid) who are more established. We are differentiating by making ourselves the most creator-friendly company on that side of the market, and by being the most vocal and active (on social, email, etc) on the business side of the market. It's going to be a marathon/uphill battle, but I have faith in our team. :)

  232. 1

    We're a bootstrapped DeFi dashboard competing with the likes of Zerion and Zapper. It's hard out here but we're going to make it happen. Can't do everything, just trying to focus on the problems we can solve that competitors aren't prioritizing right now.

  233. 1

    I run https://oikolab.com and I compete with IBM weather/Accuweather and the likes in terms of climate & historical weather data.

    I'm able to compete because most primary data come from public sources (NOAA/ECMWF etc.) anyways and I've benefited greatly from open-source tools and cloud-computing services made available in the last several years.

  234. 1

    Slido and Ahaslides.

    Very niche products to add interaction into your presentations: polls, Q&A, etc.

    Unlike my competitors Claper (https://get.claper.co) stand out on price, with simpler prices but also more advantageous (with a more generous free offer), a different vision that is reflected in the product and its use and in the long run, much more useful interaction elements (which are my secret weapons against them).

    And above all: being closer to the customers and evolving much faster!

  235. 1

    ReflectCode
    We convert entire Android app source code to Xcode for iPhone
    Our automated source code migration can accelerate overall development
    * Advantage:
    - Substantial cost reduction
    - Conversion of all files (Java, Kotlin, Layout, Resources)
    - Generates pure native code (Swift, Storyboard, Auto layout, @IBAction, @IBOutlet)

    * web : https://www.reflectcode.com
    * sample apps : https://github.com/ReflectCode/
    

    We share the market with these with a different approach -
    Flutter (Google)
    ReactNative (Face Book)
    Xamarin (Microsoft)

  236. 1

    Croct's PMS (personalization management system) is an integrated software solution that enables marketers to manage and deliver personalized messages, campaigns, and interactive experiences to consumers. It's like a headless CMS, with personalization, AB testing, and real-time personalization capabilities.

    We compete with headless CMSs (Contentful, Strapi), AB testing platforms (Google Optimize), personalization tools (Adobe, Insider), and even with data platforms (Segment, Snowplow) since we also provide real-time data processing.

  237. 1

    Business is business.
    If you create a new product, you must redefine the space (market) you are in.

    Ask yourself:
    Should I create a new Webflow alternative?
    Why am I creating it? For whom? Is there enough space for my new product?
    Etc…

    The same goes for Notion ;)

  238. 1

    Hey! I created a Social Media for gamers, GGs.tv.

    It's been out for a year or so and we have 6k users. It seems that getting people to try out a new social media is difficult, or maybe the bootstrapped marketing is killing us. Not sure. I made the site to be a Myspace for gamers. Users can customize their profiles, embed their Twitch streams, and earn XP from interacting which can be used to buy physical products.

    There is an app on both app stores if any gamers on here wanna give it a go! GGsTV

    ALWAYS open to feedback and how I can make it better.

    Thank you!

  239. 1

    There's lots of room for growth in our area, but I'd say at Cadstrom.io we are competing with Autodesk, Altium, and other large CAD providers.

    That said, we are focusing on a different market, and trying to build something that's pretty unique in the PCB space.

  240. 1

    ShopAgain (shopagain.io) competing with the big guys like Klaviyo & Mailchimp :)

  241. 1

    My SaaS https://leansence.com is competing with a lot of big players from different niches. Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, Hootsuite, Hypefury, Tweet Hunter to name a few.

  242. 1

    Right here! Im the founder of 9amim.com which is an Arabic logo maker. I'm currently competing against Canva - A multi billion dollar company - for a spot on google in the middle east.

  243. 1

    I'm going up against Apple, LinkedIn, and eventually Google, by bringing end-to-end encryption to the contact relations management space with Neucards.

  244. 1

    I am competing with ClickFunnels with my product CloudFunnels (https://getcloudfunnels.in).
    How do I differentiate?

    First, I am building a platform, more than a sales funnel builder. Built dozens of plugins for CloudFunnels which are free (https://marketplaces.cloudfunnels.in).

    Stretching the Funnel / Sales site builder into a multi-niche creation platform.

    We added CourseFunnels last year. Which is a top-notch Course-creation & marketing app that shares the CloudFunnels platform (same plugins work)

    Next up a couple of months later, ShopFunnels. It's going to be a solidly built E-Commerce platform like Shopify built on my CloudFunnels architecture.

    I am building a multi-niche sellers solution that integrates together and works together.

    Sellers start using one and find transition easy to the others
    Developers build for one and get access to all the markets

    We have thousands of users (mostly from LTDs), and thousands of sites are already running on our platform.

    With every passing week we add more users, better capabilities and a more refined product.

  245. 1
    •   I handle digital marketing and content creation for “Athena chess club” we’re a newly launched chess and board game academy/club house,
      
    •    We have a wide demographic target,but we’re looking to lay emphasis on kids and young adults, teaching them board games with the general outlook of tact, patience and calculated risks as valuable life skills.
      
    •      We believe that if children are taught to harness these capabilities at the earliest of stages, then they have an unfair advantage to life that could set them in the right places .

      
    •   Secondly, we aim to build our online presence by hosting and live streaming virtual events and contests with enthusiastic and wholesome communities such as yours,

      
    •   our target for now includes, kids in preschool, special editions and incentives for kids in orphanages, young adults In rehab, the physically challenged and visually impaired, if you find this interesting, please reach out, I’m not doing justice to the scope and impact of this, so let’s talk more in depth. Hope to hear from you soon.
  246. 1

    readcaffeine and The Cache are competing with some very large organizations like:

    -Cnet
    -Morning Brew
    -Digital Trends
    -LLT

    • Future PLC (They own a lot of tech publications)

    And then there's me, alone, trying to take on these corporations.

  247. 1

    Hi, I’m Paolo, founder at storya.app

    We are an inclusive storytelling platform (and medium agnostic, meaning creators can upload anything from comics to poetry) so we are competing with a pretty broad range of massive incumbents:

    1. Wattpad (100 million users)
    2. Kindle Unlimited (3 million subs)
    3. Webtoon (global leader in online comics)

    Completely crazy? Most likely.

    But the Web2 attention/monetization is completely broken and Web3 tools are still a largely alien language for 99% of creators. Our strategy is for Storya to leverage both these trends by:

    • Offering the best/most creator-centric monetization options
    • Simplify things like NFT sales for creators by offering one-click minting: i.e. remove the need to learn about blockchains, smart contracts, various cryptos
    • offering integrated/mostly free access to AI tools like machine translation, art generation and narration.

    That, plus a strong focus on inclusion and diversity: we are making Storya for the 99% of creators without the infrastructure, money and tech skills to navigate ten different platforms to create, advertise and monetize their content.

    Cheers!

  248. 1

    RoomSteals.com is competing with Booking, Expedia, and other OTAs. We’ve decided to give all the money they make on the hotel reservation back to the customer and make our money via the membership. It’s a win-win-win and is commoditizing trust and transparency in the hotel/travel industry.

  249. 1

    We don't compete with big guys ourselves, but worked with companies doing just that (ElectroNeek - UiPath/Automation Anywhere; Uploadcare - Cloudinary), specifically in the SEO area.

    The framework we came up with has much to do with Outcome-Driven Innovation and JTBD, here's what it is about:

    • Your innovation starts being 'good' if you do something at least 2x better or 2x cheaper than your competitors. The 'cheaper' part of the equation is not the best thing to be after when running on limited resources.
    • To do something better, you got to know what is that exactly that your product does. Which needs does it cover? Which of them are underserved?
    • To understand that, build a Value Proposition Canvas for your product and for one of the competitor products, compare them. What best differentiates you from the competitor? Is there a real demand for it?
    • In the areas where you differentiate, focus on content. Tell the world why you put your product this way and how this will help your users.
    • To convey this messaging, start with the channels you have the most traction with.
  250. 1

    This comment was deleted 9 months ago.

  251. 0

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

  252. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 months ago.

  253. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 months ago.

  254. 1

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

  255. 1

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

  256. 5

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

    1. 1

      Yeah, have been following your journey and see you consistently building Songbox.
      I remember last time you were participating in some local government competition or so and Songbox was apparently in final list (couldn't recollect exactly or may be its not even Songbox). What happened after that?

      1. 2

        This comment was deleted a year ago.

    2. 1

      Looks awesome idea. If you are active on Twitter, then I would like to add you in my "indie hackers" List. :)

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 16 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments