As makers, we're drawn to creating something completely new—that shiny object no one has seen before. It's exciting, it's creative, and it feeds our desire to innovate. But if you're an indie developer or bootstrapped founder, being first to market might actually be working against you.
Will users want what you're building? Does it have all the features a user would look for? Just how many users are their for a product like this? Will you be able to reach the users? How much would a user pay to use your product?
All great questions, that you have to find the answers for.
The Second-Mover Advantage
But here's the thing: when you're not first, most of these questions already have answers. The market has been validated, user expectations are established, and pricing models have been tested. You're not shooting in the dark—you're aiming at a visible target.
Let's explore some strategies for building successful "second-to-market" products, using a task management app as our example:
Same but better
Can you improve the current offering?
Better design, better speed, better onboarding, better price or better support are just a few ways to make existing applications better.
Maybe you don't like Jira because the design sucks, it's slow and expensive. Make a better version!
Same but more
Are there any features missing in existing in products?
Perhaps it doesn't integrate with the new code management/deployment tools, or doesn't allow you login with SSO.
Same but less
Conversely, perhaps there's too much going on. I just want a simple tool to manage my todo list, I don't need to be able to share my tasks with others, or a gantt chart.
Same problem, different approach
Todo apps are supposed to improve productivity. Perhaps I you don't need to plan out my work weeks in advance. Perhaps I just want to focus on the tasks I need to complete today.
Yes I've had the odd success with projects that were new, but for the majority that did well, I was late to the game.
When we built Will Robots Take My Job (since sold) it was definitely not the first website to share the risks of workers being replaced with robot or AI, in fact many used the same source data.
We added additional data about jobs from the Bureau of Labor and Statistic. We added custom open graph share images for each job when it was posted on social media to make it more likely people would visit the website. We added some levity to the website with the descriptions like "You are doomed", if a job was very likely to be automated quickly.
When I worked on Founderpath, we weren't the first company to offer factoring. We focused in on the SaaS world, made it work very quickly and integrated with many different payment processors.
I didn't build the first Bluesky Directory, but I quickly focused in on Starter Packs in a different way than others were doing at the time and managed to get a lot of attention and traffic.
Being first to market isn't always the advantage we think it is. When you build for an existing market, you can focus your energy on execution rather than exploration. While this approach doesn't guarantee success, it eliminates many unknowns and lets you concentrate on the elements you can control.