Clarification: Don't reinvent the wheel means Don't exactly copy another product. It's damn important to reinvent defensible products that either, and hopefully do all of:
a) solve a slightly different problem
b) target different users
c) solve the problem in a 10x better, compelling way
Uniqueness will be added to the collective, so don't bother creating categories because that requires extra effort building validation from below zero and any new products coming along can execute much easier with the lessons and improvements of the "settlers."
I don’t believe that your clarification of the point you quoted is correct.
It sounds more as if the commenter wanted to point out that it is better to outsource/Saas chat, login, design and the likes to some external service instead of wasting time on it initially.
With that said - I believe you have a point in what you stated. A lot of products came out as a better copy of another product.
Great point. Let me rephrase this slightly to make it obvious that there is no contradiction between these two seemingly opposite pieces of advice. Do reinvent the wheel to solve your problems that you are then planning to sell to others. Do not reinvent the wheel to solve your problems that you are not planning to productize and for which you can easily get SaaS solutions. In other words, either create SaaS products, or use SaaS products. Don’t create one-off internal products that are not SaaS-able.
a) solve a slightly different problem
b) target different users
c) solve the problem in a 10x better, compelling way
Uniqueness will be added to the collective, so don't bother creating categories because that requires extra effort building validation from below zero and any new products coming along can execute much easier with the lessons and improvements of the "settlers."