Recently I launched http://doosracricket.com and currently working on getting users. It is a prediction site where you can compete with friends or world on cricket. I was counting on World cup 2011 series starting February 19th.
Now I see Yahoo cricket is also coming with Predictopus (more sophisticated with huge prizes)
Not sure if this is good or bad for my app. Looking forward to HN community for advice.
"At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him.
What this meant in practice was that we deliberately sought hard problems. If there were two features we could add to our software, both equally valuable in proportion to their difficulty, we'd always take the harder one."
In addition, I would say: (1) provide extremely good customer relations (any post submitted to your site blog or email sent is answered in half an hour max) and (2) use your personal network, Yahoo is not a person, so it doesn't have any friends, you do. Use them and their friends.