I pre-launched BoatPassport.app 4 days ago, and I couldn't believe my eyes when I went to Reddit to remind early testers who hadn't yet signed up. By pure chance, I came across a post at the top of my feed, 20 minutes old, about a new app that tackles exactly what BoatPassport was built for.
My first reaction was disbelief! *What a copy cat!?! It looks eerily similar to my app's design* (it uses the same icon package). I was devastaded. I had just spent an entire month of my life building an app from scratch, only to have somebody replicate my work and make it free to use (for now, of course). I'm fairly certain this user saw my reddit pre-launch post for early testers.
This startled me. Here I am. This happens, what should I do?
I gathered myself and went to check out the competitor's product. The app looks analogous to mine, but there are also a few differences. Fortunately, to cool my boiling blood, this wasn't just an exact replica of my work. There were extra features (although no expense tracking) such as floorplan, document uploading (on my to-do list), checklists, and boat members (on my very future to-do list). It also had location by dock (I wanted to implement this with AIS; maybe this alternative is better, especially for fixed berth boats). It turns out this wasn't a copycat. This was a developer who just happened to be developing the same idea as I was. I know ideas don't have owners and are intrinsically worthless. Only by taking action on them can some value be extracted. I'm also not oblivious that I was definetely not the first person to think about this, nor will I be the last, and it was surprisingly strange that there wasn't any other product whatsoever already built for this target case, as the boat community is massive.
I have to reflect now on my next steps. My plan before this news was to add some features (like email validation, emails, and weather and AIS API usage) and then do a proper launch on Product Hunt, Hacker News, a few subreddits, and some other sailing websites. I have a larger list of future features to implement, but these would take a while to implement and, without traction, might prove not to be worth it.
Now, I have a free app competitor that has some cool features that my app doesn't. If I were to implement those, it would take me a couple of days. What should I do? Should I spend a few days adding these features and only then launch? Would it get traction? The other app is not well known; afterall, it was just launched. Hacker News will be brutal if they find there's a free version. A lot to think about.
Well, talk about quick learning. I haven't learned so much in such a short period ever, I remember in university thinking this is the kind of thing I should optimize for. So, I'm not making any money, but I'm learning quickly and a lot. Real-life learning, not academic learning.
In the end, I guess that, luckily for me, I have a long-term outlook. Build small bets and learn in the process. I'm aware that this learning was bound for some hardship and even some occasional reality checks. This was my first real, complete product, but there are more to come. And BoatPassport isn't dead!