Remember my company, Method in Mind? Our first product is called Operatus. Hooray! Much more on this in the coming weeks. In discussing Operatus with some early customers, I discovered an interesting thing that some fellow entrepreneurs might find interesting. I was talking idly about social networks (Operatus is *not* a social network), and so of course mentioned Facebook and MySpace, at which point they displayed this expression on their face conveying "I....you just made those words up."
This highlights a very important point. Your competitors are not actually your competitors until your customers know about them. When you're advocating your product, you are in an excellent position if yours is the only solution they know about, and they only know about yours because you're telling them. Having a website, and having a foothold in the public mind, are two very different things.
For example. Suppose you've got this great idea to make a great mass emailer for companies (then you are a horrible person). Perhaps, you did the Google search and were disheartened by the existence of your competition. However, if you stroll down to your boss' office, I doubt they would be able to name even one of these companies.
At the extreme other end, suppose you've got this great idea to make a great mp3 player. You tell your mom, the complete non-technophile, and she tells you "You mean you want to make an iPod?" Yeah, the competition's got a good foothold there.