Dennis Gorelik

Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
At the end of 2006 I decided to build a job search aggregator. After 2 months of developing a prototype I found out that indeed.com and simplyhired.com already implemented job aggregators for ~2 years.

So, instead of continuing with job aggregator - I decided to build a job board (postjobfree.com)

My job board grew OK, because indeed.com and simplyhired.com sent us organic (free) traffic for couple of years.

But then (~2009) Indeed and Simplyhired started to charge job boards money for the traffic, and then refused to send even paid traffic to job boards (~2012).

In addition to that, Japanese "Recruit" holding bought Indeed in 2012 (for $1.2B).

Then "Recruit" bought Simplyhired (2016).

Then "Recruit" bought Glassdoor in 2018 (for another $1.2B). Glassdoor worked as a job aggregator as well.

So now largest job aggregator companies convert from "job aggregator" model to "job board" model where customers are direct employers and not other job boards.

So few years ago I started to transform my job board business into job aggregator again. I think if I never abandoned job aggregator idea in the first place, my business, probably, would be a little bit more successful by now. However it is hard to tell for sure. I could have given up competing against Indeed and SimplyHired back in 2007-2012.

People who are dreaming about starting companies, but do not start them - think that good idea is the most important part for business.
In reality, even though good business idea is important, idea execution by far outweighs the idea itself.

Here's what Steve Jobs said about it in his Lost Interview (1995):
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One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease, and this disease (and I’ve seen other people get it too), it’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work, and if you just tell all these other people, here’s this great idea then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is that there is just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows, it never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot of more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there is tremendous trade-offs that you have to make, I mean there are certain things that you just can’t make electrons do, there are certain things you can’t make plastic do, or glass do. Or factories do, or robots do and as you get into all these things … designing a product is keeping 5000 things in your brain, these concepts, and fitting them all together and kind-of continue to push and fit them together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently. And it’s that process that is the magic.
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http://structurise.com/screenshot-ocr/

Discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11023217