At both Viaweb and YC, every minute I spent thinking about competitors was, in retrospect, a minute wasted.
Nah. To succeed you need to compete asymmetrically. To compete asymmetrically, you need to understand, from the customer's point of view what your value proposition is relative to alternatives.
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Do you suppose this is why Tolkien sold more books than most other novelists?
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I don't write books, I build companies. There's money to be made copying, differentiating from, hiring from, buying out, and underpricing the competition. At almost every stage of a company's life, the competition is highly relevant.
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You probably will have to do this once at the beginning and then move on
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Continuously.
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I honestly don’t know how well you need to know your competitors. I feel like you should have a sense of where others are going, but obsess over competitors and you’ll play catch up forever.
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IMHO, it varies according to the situation. Obsess? In some industries at certain stages of the company, that might make sense. Suppose you were an oil company competing against the standard oil trust. Might be a good idea.
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