One of the best talks about this exact same topic is "The infinite players are the ones that frustrate their competitors." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5nAaxIkmFE
I liked his talks.
“Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
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Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#92You 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.
This.
I’ve just spent a few days with a client who is in a bit of a fluster, as they feel their business (ten years, eight people, very healthy revenue & profit with huge blue-chip clients) is under threat from a new VC backed competitor.
I said to think of it differently - that the new competitor is so inefficient and unsure about what they are doing that they need a $100M safety blanket. Some will be dazzled by their meteoritic trail - and will get their fingers burned when they touch it.
Also, that with a small team and minimal funding you have secured robust relationships with the core clients they need to make their business a success, and have locked them out. With a small team and minimal funding, you are the guys being invited to speak at conferences - and they are having to sponsor them to get air-time.
Finally, almost verbatim, as I give this speech to both myself and others fairly frequently: “Keep your eyes in the boat, row your own race - and make them anticipate and fear your moves. The moment you worry about what is happening in their boat and how you should respond, you are rowing their race, and you have lost.”
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#93Agree with PG. I mean I'd love to have the free time to be able sit analyze and strategize against what my competitors are doing, but I'm too busy working on the next place which I believe will add the most value. In the end you'll end up with a different priority/feature-set and USPs that focusing and trying to replicate what your competitors are doing. IMO the most important thing is to have a solid Customer base,…
Yes both users ideas and self generated USP's are important. But since mostly everything can be copied, doesn't it make sense to build a defensible strategy , building things your competitors will find hard to copy ? And doesn't looking at competitors helps with that?
> doesn't it make sense to build a defensible strategy , building things your competitors will find hard to copy ?
How does looking at what your competitors are doing help with building a defensible strategy?
Either you're copying what they've already done and are playing catchup with already exists or you're somehow looking at what they haven't done to implement something you think they'd be hard to implement, in which case you're focusing on what your competitors are not doing instead of where you think will provide the best value to your Customers.
Which I believe is at the heart of what PG is saying, you should have relentless Customer focus and do what you believe delivers the most value instead of focusing on competing against your competitors.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#94Man but it's so hard to stop thinking. People said to build an MVP. I did. Comparing it with competitors, it looks empty. It gets the job done but what about other 107 integrations with third-party APIs my competitors provide? Even if I show it to my potential customers, it feels like cheating. I feel like if they know about my competitors they're bound to leave my software for sure. This sucks, even more, when you a…
All you need is a different angle. Read Blue Ocean Strategy.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#95I’m not sure what spirit this is written in but as the author notes it absolutely doesn’t generalise. Actually it generalises less and less the smaller your company and the more critical your focus and USP is to survival.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#96[deleted]
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#97'One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest. '
T.S. Eliot in The Sacred Wood.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#98Funny - I have an email from pg from 2011 where YC didn't fund OpenRent [1] due to our competitors being too dominant.
As head strong (and certainly naiive) young founders at the time, we continued with our vision anyway. Thankfully we have gone on to become by far the largest rental agency in the uk, and have driven real change (see tenant fees ban) in the industry.
I mention this as when it comes to investment decisions, competitors / incumbents of course do matter. But as per what I think pg means here, when running your own business any time spent thinking about the next startup to raise a bucket load of cash is of course wasted. That has certainly been the case in our industry where this seems to happen on a monthly basis.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I’ve seena company creating “Google Photos” two months before Google. Sometimes a competitor is really a competitor.
Absolutely. A better team can disrupt the disruptor within a few months. Even incumbents can figure it out and get the 6 month head start neutralized. Being worried is a good and rational response.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> groups of 20 year olds 10k$ and some advice. not that bad of an idea imho. a VC fund with 100mil can fund 10,000 groups of kids this way. Gives kids new opportunities socially (reduces teen delinquency), and the VC could hope to recoup if/when one of them becomes unicorn status.
That's a horrible idea. Whoever is in charge of this fund is responsible for dolling out 100mm of other people's money. How in the world does this group of investors responsibly filter and vet 10,000 suitable companies in a time effective manner? How do you effectively keep track of the founders and the money? Are checks being written to 20 year olds without much scrutiny in the hope that a unicorn shows up without a…
Eh, call it a non-profit or charity. Give the kids who show promise in tech a chance to just start running instead of taking the typical college route. I doubt it'd be on the scale of 10k companies, but a thousand a year? That could be doable. Have the contracts be very generous towards the "students", and try to make up the difference with donations and alumni contributions. It'd essentially become a new form of secondary education, a trade school for tech in a sense.