Thanks for the question and for the RJMetrics nostalgia!
I think your question is actually offering a false choice. There are many dimensions on which a company might be considered a good idea or a bad one, but I don’t think entering into a market with existing players – even a lot of them – should be a wholesale disqualifier. Nor should category creation be viewed as a golden ticket or something to avoid.
When deciding which business to pursue next (in this most recent wave when I chose Crossbeam), my framework was more about:
- Founder-market fit: Am I uniquely suited to creating success in this business and laying out a vision that will be differentiated and succeed?
- Total upside potential: is the TAM large? what are the break points (“kinks in the growth line” that you can foresee) and are they addressable or preventable?
- Is there a good answer to the “why now?” question?
- The fun factor: Am I fascinated enough by the problem set to fully live in it for years to come? Can I trigger that passion in other people when I talk with them about the idea?
The fact that Crossbeam was a category-creation play and RJMetrics was a crowded market play were not in the top 5 inputs.