Nick Quah shared this in a recent newsletter:

[I have] this feeling that everybody's drilling for oil in the same spot because some other guy found oil there already.

It's human nature: when we hear that someone else has found gold, we all rush to that same spot, hoping to hit it big too.

But, as we saw with the real gold rush, that strategy rarely works.

Nick thinks makers have two options:

Build something that does the same thing for the same audience, but do it better. If this is the case, he says, "you better bring it." Or, "identify and pursue a pocket of pent-up demand that has yet to be unleashed."

It's tempting to look at what's already succeeded and try to replicate that success. But, this rarely works. You're up against an incumbent who already has the market share and the mindshare. There's little reason for people to switch, or pay attention, to your thing.

The alternative isn't easy.

It takes a lot of digging and luck to discover a "pocket of pent-up demand." It's also way riskier: you're going into undiscovered (and unproven territory).

Here is your best strategy: quit drilling for oil where everyone else has already dug, and look for an untapped oil well instead.

What does this look like practically?

Taylor Otwell, PHP, and Laravel

Taylor Otwell's Laravel is arguably the fastest growing programming framework in the world. When you talk to a PHP developer about Laravel, it's like talking to a kid about Christmas. Laravel was the gift they were waiting for.

When Taylor released Laravel in 2011, Ruby on Rails had already been out for seven years. Rails was the de facto "cool web framework" of choice.

For years, Rails got all of the attention. It had an exciting community, the best conferences, and rockstar contributors.

Meanwhile, PHP developers were the brunt of jokes. A typical reaction to anyone building a site in PHP was: "Ew, why are you using PHP?"