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

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101–110 of 166 posts

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

#101

Sounds more like survivorship bias than actual good advice.

What about it makes it sound more like survivorship bias?

Because people whose startups tanked due to them not keeping an eye on competitors are likely under-represented in the category of "things Hacker News pays attention to".

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

#102
post #41

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.

I was over the moon when my main competitor started copying my features, it meant they were always going to be one step behind me. Not only that but they would also make the same mistakes I did.

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

#103
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://i.imgur.com/1PmAL1K.png What's wrong when a grown man says something like that? Are phthalates to blame?

Adipose tissue is estrogenizing.

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

#104
In the US Civil War, general Sherman was brilliant at logistics and military science and had one of the most prescient views of the wars length and brutality at its outset. And yet, US Grant was made the overall field commander by Lincoln. Of Grant, Sherman argued he himself was better at generaling than Grant in almost every way except this:

Grant doesn't give a damn what the enemy does out of his sight, but it scares me like hell.

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

#106
post #83
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bee…

How does 'giving your customers fake goods' not hurt customer service? It seems like a customer first approach should be tougher on this.

FBA sellers are the customers of that section. The buyers on Amazon are not relevant.

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

#107
post #41

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.

I'm in the process of ideation/brainstorming/prototyping for my very first product. I can't decide between educating myself on what my competitors are doing, or focusing on what makes my own product special.

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

#108

'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…

I'd go even further and say there is no novel thinking, only unique recombination, randomness and reaction.

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

#109
post #41

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.

If both you and a competitor could build a feature, then it was a feature that was going to be built anyway. The art is to position and brand yourself in a way that allows you to build unique features that wouldn't be useful to a competitor because you are attacking different market segments. If you can't position, then you become a commodity and you're competing purely on price.

Anyone can build a feature you can. Some market segments have existing players and people shouldn't be afraid to play competitively. You don't live in a bubble and you can innovate all day but your customers are still the same people with the same needs. Either you are solving them, in which case someone else will too. Or you are trying to sell them your toy project and convince them they have a problem that it solves. SV has burned through billions on projects that were hyper niche or had no market at all.

You can make a moat around your product, but that is different. You still have a core value proposition that solves their real world problem and there will be other people solving it too.

Most companies build moats through contractual lock in, trust and size, or simply buying their competitors. I have yet to see a feature only moat.

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

#110
Jean Marie Dedecker, Belgian politician now, formerly Olympic judo coach, made his team combat internally.

They won a lot of prices, but that's because the global championships were "just a practice" for being the best internally. Not bothering others, not settling for a second place. Ever

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