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“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”

#121

Post by douglaswlance »

anotheryou wrote: post #108
martingoodson wrote: post #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…

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

If you think about how neurons work, they only make new connections, they don't spontaneously create something out of nothing.

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

#122

Post by sah2ed »

goatherders wrote: post #51
Animats wrote: post #49

One word: Blackberry.

I dont understand your point. I THINK you are suggesting that BlackBerry (RIM) would have been well served paying attention to competitors, particularly Apple. But that is what ultimately sent RIM on a downward spiral: focusing on competitors instead of customers. If they had focused on being the premier business oriented device things might have turned out different.

There are multiple factors at play, but focusing on only one factor can lead anyone to draw the wrong conclusions as you and the gp have done.

The gp mentioned RIM as a clear example of a company that did not focus on its competitor (Apple) and paid dearly for such a mistake, but that’s an incomplete reading of history.

First of all, Apple was only one of several competitors including Nokia, Samsung, SonyEricsson etc to RIM.

The iPhone introduced by Apple heralded a new class of mobile phones that are considered smartphones that were:

1. touch-based;

2. had larger screen real-estate;

3. fully Internet-capable (compared to pared-down Internet protocols like WAP, i-mode etc).

After the iPhone was launched, Google entered the ring with Android. The head of Android (who is ex-Apple) has publicly admitted to scrapping their v1.0 after he saw just how good the iPhone was. IOW, Android copied several concepts from Apple because the iPhone demonstrated what a smartphone should be capable of.

This imitation step is important as it marked an important shift in the smartphone market — the Overton window for smartphones capabilities had moved: will people continue to buy screen-constrained and Internet-constrained devices that feature a physical (high tactile feedback) keyboard OR screen- and Internet-unconstrained devices with a virtual (low tactile feedback) keyboard?

RIM bet the house on the former while the market was slowly but steadily moving to the latter. Of course betting against what customers were demanding is why BB lost against Android & iOS, not that RIM failed to imitate Apple to the letter.

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

#123

Post by koonsolo »

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #107
evangow wrote: 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.

You cannot make your own product special without knowing what your competitors are doing.

You have to study the entire market (which means competitors), and then see how you fit in there, and what is special.

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

#124

Post by chdaniel »

dazbradbury wrote: post #98

Funny - 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 deci…

Happy to see here brits as well

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

#125

Post by krapp »

koonsolo wrote: post #123
tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You cannot make your own product special without knowing what your competitors are doing. You have to study the entire market (which means competitors), and then see how you fit in there, and what is special.

Most products aren't that special relative to their competitors. The number of people actually coming to market with a better mousetrap is vanishingly small compared to those who just market essentially the same product or service differently or try to cut costs.

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

#127

Post by paulryanrogers »

3pt14159 wrote: post #112
tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Daniel I understand you're tenacious, but the real thing to focus on is getting the product to the point where anyone can use it to solve any problem well. Almost always this is easiest if the person that you're solving the problem for is yourself. Take the Overcast podcast app, for example. I was one of the first users of it. The way its evolved over the years is directly because the founder uses it routinely. He di…

I considered a podcast app with a niche feature. But market research indicated it wasn't worth my time and I wasn't passionate enough to do it anyway. Life is balance.

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

#128

Post by ehnto »

fmihaila wrote: post #118
ehnto wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 solve…

> I have yet to see a feature only moat. Features that induce a significant network effect can potentially lead to a moat. No contracts necessary. (Maybe this is what you meant when you mentioned "size" as a moat-building mechanism.)

Yep, that was the intent behind mentioning size. Google could be said to have a network effect based moat around Google Docs for example.

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

#129

Post by rwmj »

katzgrau wrote: post #86
chii wrote: post #40

Earlier 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…

> 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?

Sounds like whoever solves this will go on to be a very successful VC. Perhaps an application for AI, or a crowd-sourcing model?

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