Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 166 posts

Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”

#41

Post by evangow »

You have no idea how relevant this is to me at exactly this moment! About an hour ago, I found out that a competitor (a larger incumbent player) released a feature today that I had built and released 6 months ago!

I've been panicking the last couple of hours, but now it's back to the grind. I've got a lot more feature ideas in mind, and this is just that extra push to do the things I've been putting off.

Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”

#42

Post by lbacaj »

aboutruby wrote: post #15
lbacaj wrote: post #14

Totally agree with PG on this. This isn’t the first time he says this obviously and has put a lot of thought into this. The quote I really like from him on this topic is: “A startup worrying about competitors is like a fat guy smoking a cigarette as he worries about contracting West Nile Virus.” I like to remind my two friends helping me build our side project right now of this reality all the time. There are so many…

Link to mentioned quote: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/398642023529345024?lang=en (7 Nov 2013)

Nice, good find.

Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”

#44

Post by kvark »

Yeah, but what about thinking strategically, placing figures on a virtual chess board, anticipating moves, etc? Assuming their actions can affect you, or otherwise them wouldn't be competitors. If this is a wasted effort to someone, maybe they just aren't doing this right.

Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”

#45

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

robryan wrote: post #11
remote_phone wrote: post #4

Sounds more like survivorship bias than actual good advice.

It only makes sense if you are selling a unique product. Even then though in most online niches are you going to have similar products that people are considering. For example this Drip comparisons page is a waste of time to create according to the above advice: https://www.drip.com/comparisons

That’s just content marketing, nothing to do with thinking about competition, although that’s what you’ll be doing if you write that.

Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”

#46

Post by ajkjk »

xfitm3 wrote: post #29
aboutruby wrote: post #7

Full text is: > At both Viaweb and YC, every minute I spent thinking about competitors was, in retrospect, a minute wasted. Follow-up tweet: > It may be useful for some companies to think about competitors. That's why I didn't phrase it as a general rule. In particular it may be useful for more established companies to. If a startup has to, though, they're probably doomed. Also a quote from Jeff Bezos: > “If you want…

Do you think Jeff’s statement holds true today? I’m under the impression Amazon is less customer centric but maybe I am biased.

From three recent years working there, absolutely. They bend over backwards for their customers, always. The problem, and where most of the bad reputation comes from, is from people who aren't their customers -- warehouse employees, if you're trying to get things shipped to retail customers, or the actual employees, if you're trying to do anything. And, probably, their over-obsession with customers is why they've been so slow and incompetent about dealing with sellers cheating their system -- because the default was letting them get away with everything.

Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”

#47

Post by muzani »

GuiA wrote: post #9
keyle wrote: post #5

Side jab... hasn't posted on HN since 2015 but regular on Twitter? What gives?

One cements your spot as a “thought leader” (blue verified check, very visible follower/retweet/like count, routinely used as a source by the media), the other not at all.

Ironically, he cemented his spot as a thought leader by building HN. Even when he's not here, he still holds influence.

Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”

#48

Post by muzani »

sitkack wrote: post #38
lbacaj wrote: post #14

Totally agree with PG on this. This isn’t the first time he says this obviously and has put a lot of thought into this. The quote I really like from him on this topic is: “A startup worrying about competitors is like a fat guy smoking a cigarette as he worries about contracting West Nile Virus.” I like to remind my two friends helping me build our side project right now of this reality all the time. There are so many…

This makes me think of the relationship between gestation time and maximum age of the organism and the number of offspring. Maybe the next VC craze will be handing groups of 20 year olds 10k$ and some advice.

This is basically Y Combinator and 500 Startups.
Post reply on HN