competition is for losers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-...
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Competition is not market validation
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Re: Competition is not market validation
#22My views on market validation have changed with age. What I've observed after talking to hundreds of founders is that it's now so easy for someone to enter a market that it seems like those that are successful are the ones who managed to _create_ their market. No matter how smart or how good your idea is, many many successful ventures are successful because of some intangible / hard-to-reproduce circumstance that all…
Markets are formed from societal conditions, businesses emerge within that. Nobody "creates a market" - not even market makers. What you're observing is the discovery of a series of repeatable process that perfectly match the ability for 2 or more parties to exchange value in a safe and understood manner relatively to the period in time. The systems and processes are all relatively the same in most business regardless of industry or size, what differs is: nuanced for every segment and therefore SAMs, TAMs, TAMs of TAMs. Said simply: being the first to find the right product-channel-timing fit for demand that already existed in some form.
Re: Competition is not market validation
#23My views on market validation have changed with age. What I've observed after talking to hundreds of founders is that it's now so easy for someone to enter a market that it seems like those that are successful are the ones who managed to _create_ their market. No matter how smart or how good your idea is, many many successful ventures are successful because of some intangible / hard-to-reproduce circumstance that all…
"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."
Re: Competition is not market validation
#24competition is for losers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-...
Yes, let's look to the founder of Palantir for life advice. Great plan.
Re: Competition is not market validation
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, monopolies are great for the C-suite, but they turn out to be really bad for the end users and customers, the real losers when there is no competition. Get in loser, we're going for a monopoly! It's all fun and games until you're locked in and enshitification sets in. I would sooner go without than get fooled again.
Please read the article before responding.
The paywalled, appeal to authority article?
Re: Competition is not market validation
#26competition is for losers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-...
Sure, monopolies are great for the C-suite, but they turn out to be really bad for the end users and customers, the real losers when there is no competition. Get in loser, we're going for a monopoly! It's all fun and games until you're locked in and enshitification sets in. I would sooner go without than get fooled again.
HN is a site aimed at future C-suiters and those who willingly make them rich. It's on target.
Re: Competition is not market validation
#27Re: Competition is not market validation
#28Re: Competition is not market validation
#29I've been building startups for 15 years now and through a lot of pain, reflection and study have learned:
- markets are patterns in what people are trying to get done (importance / satisfaction)
- having an objective to validate a market is foolish for startup founders, maybe it makes sense as DD for vcs but they never do it, which is also foolish (founders should be trying to discover and understand markets, not validate them)
- getting good at quickly discovering and seeing truth in markets is a skill that can be developed, and is extremely valuable for engineers to learn
- opportunities are all about timing, and requires knowing about lots of markets and lots of tech and seeing how they can come together
- the timing is all about knowing how good tech needs to be to be better at getting customer job done, which requires understanding tech and empathy for customers (or luck)
- pmfit failure rate is so high because most founders don't even know what a market is
Re: Competition is not market validation
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