I used to think that I was the first to come up with startup ideas. Every time I'd google it and find out that it's already there.
Now I just try to make a living!
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Not being first doesn't mean you're not onto something. In fact. It may mean there is a market and someone is playing there. Finding it's already being addressed may in fact be a wonderfully affirming thing. It validates the problem and possibly your solution to it.
Consider this as well. If you're the first to solve a problem or the first to propose a particular solution you're going to have to educate / explain it to for every conversion. That's hard.
Another way to put it is "if your idea is so unique that no one has ever had it before, there is probably something profoundly wrong with it."
Ouch.
I've been developing 'tech stuff' in one form or another since 1980-or-so. I rarely (read: never) have an idea that someone else somewhere hasn't already had.
Usually, I use that to my advantage by being able to research all the ins and outs of similar, but not the same ideas. That's cool.
Once I came up with an idea that, to me, was completely unique. It had to do with using ultrasonics (hypersonics? idk - frequencies above the range of human hearing) and 'beats' (where 44000 hertz and 44440 hertz sound sources would combine to give you a pure "A" tone, as people perceive them). I could build a 'virtual' sonic environment and with software give each 'audience member' a perfect reproduction, and also make it so that somebody not wanting to listen, would hear nothing. Essentially virtual speakers in 3-space.
Woah! I thought. A new idea! And implementable! And the 'virtual speakers" can go from 0 hertz to 22K, linearly! And the highs and lows don't get distorted by room configuration!
Well, Google to the rescue. Apparently, some really smart guys in Germany figured it out a couple of years before I did.
It made me happy, because they had proved out the idea. But it made me sad, because I will probably never have a "First!" idea, ... ever. (Even if the idea was new to me. I guess the Germans have a word for that - Zeitgeist. Because, they have a word for everything)
> they had proved out the idea
You can just say "they had proven the idea". Adding "out" to verbs is very fashionable but unnecessary.
Thank you. I still like my construction, because it comports with the other languages I use daily. (I also did not know it was fashionable, just that I was lazy.)