<story><title>Is your startup idea already taken? </title><url>http://whittleidea.com/blog/is-your-start-up-idea-already-taken</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>staunch</author><text>The difference between something merely &lt;i&gt;existing&lt;/i&gt; and something &lt;i&gt;remarkable&lt;/i&gt; existing. If you find that someone has already done your idea, and they&apos;ve executed well, consider abandoning your idea. If they haven&apos;t solved the problem well enough then it doesn&apos;t matter that they &lt;i&gt;exist&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;One of the greatest sources of motivation in solving a problem is the anticipation to use the solution. If a good solution already exists then you&apos;re not going to have that.&lt;p&gt;Think of the Zune team. Those guys were trying to solve a problem that the iPod had already solved so well. Where&apos;s the excitement? They had to make up artificial problems for the Zune to solve (WiFi song sharing) just to get excited about it. The problem is that the market doesn&apos;t care about artificial problems.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is your startup idea already taken? </title><url>http://whittleidea.com/blog/is-your-start-up-idea-already-taken</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>DannyPage</author><text>I just had this very epiphany today. After being rejected by two potential investors  because of that reason (&quot;Have you heard of X?&quot;). It&apos;s frustrating to say &quot;Yes, I have, and here is why we are different&quot;, but still get written off. The investor seems to stop listening after the &quot;Yes&quot;, which stinks especially since the main problem I see with Company X is that no one is using it! (They are very loud and in the press, so it gives them an appearance of dominance). So, I will definitely try using that answer next time, if only to force the investor to realize that while the idea is out there, it hasn&apos;t won yet.</text></comment>