from Hacker News

You don't change the world with a marginally better mousetrap

by tmarman on 7/30/08, 3:41 PM with 5 comments

• by brm on 7/30/08, 4:10 PM

  You can change the world with something only marginally better in markets that are less competitive and less well-established than general internet search... unfortunately cuil chose search.

  Facebook is a marginally better mousetrap, Wordpress and Movable Type are marginally better mousetraps...They just happened to enter markets where the other options were not the greatest.

  Marginally better can also be accomplished by simply removing a feature or two... 37signals, Twitter

• by TrevorJ on 7/30/08, 8:10 PM

  Yes you do. Think about it. Was the object we know as "The mouse trap" the first tool used to kill mice? I doubt it. It simply was better than the current solutions. Sure, I know that being 'marginally better' isn't going to guarantee success, especially in a competitive market, but slight improvements can lead to widespread successes.

• by helveticaman on 7/30/08, 9:26 PM

  True. Dvorak still hasn't caught on.