One word: Blackberry.
“Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
51–60 of 166 posts
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#52Being aware of what competitors are doing is a good thing I think.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#53You 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.
Over a long enough timeframe, the better player always wins.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#54Totally 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.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#55Totally 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…
That's actually really, really good. It's super hard to adequately express ideas of "just do this (positive, constructive) thing and don't worry so much about (all the wildly unlikely things people routinely worry about instead)." But that remark does a surprisingly good job of capturing some important elements of the concept.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#56You 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.
You shipped 6 months ahead, therefore your game is better than the larger incumbent - so keep playing the way you were. All incumbents eventually get beaten - why not by you? Over a long enough timeframe, the better player always wins.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#57Sounds more like survivorship bias than actual good advice.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#58You 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.
You shipped 6 months ahead, therefore your game is better than the larger incumbent - so keep playing the way you were. All incumbents eventually get beaten - why not by you? Over a long enough timeframe, the better player always wins.