I read a blog post just now via Hacker News where a guy called Matt Swanson was lamenting that someone else had beaten him to the punch and launched a website similar to an idea he had. By the end of the post, he had come to the conclusion that this wasn't the end of the world - it taught him that the idea had merit and he was simply going to compete with them, and that he could still win because he was building a better mousetrap.

This post sort of struck a chord with me, since I had the same experience a number of months ago. In fact, my experience was almost identical since my idea was also a tech-oriented book site. Finding these competitors is definitely a blow, but I'm risen above it by taking stock of my motivations and realizing that the product was never the point for me.

After a few years of working with ancient technologies such as COBOL, I found in a bit of a depression since my ambitions had been corrupted. I felt rather like the character of Marshall Eriksen on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother. Marshall began his legal career with the goal of becoming an Environmental Lawyer, but found himself working for an evil megacorporation to pay the bills. He's in the right industry, but he's no longer pursuing the career he wanted.

My goals for my book site are a lot different than Matt's: I'm not so much developing a product so much as trying to teach myself something new. This will be the first website I've ever developed from scratch, and it's taking a long time because I'm being a bit of a perfectionist with the project. I figure if this is worth learning, then it's worth learning right. It's much harder to unlearn something you've learned incorrectly than it is to learn it right the first time. Learning something right, however, is a more time intensive process.

So Hacker News didn't ruin my morning like it ruined Matt's. My goals haven't changed, and my goals were never based on being the first mover for this idea. My goal was to use this project to develop my skills so that next time around I'll be better equipped to compete. If I learn well this time make the development process second nature to me, I can compete on execution alone next time. Maybe then I'll win.