At both Viaweb and YC, every minute I spent thinking about competitors was, in retrospect, a minute wasted.
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Only if you’re going to copy their great features, e.g. Snapchat Stories as implemented in Instagram Stories. Facebook are masters at this.
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It may be useful for some companies to think about competitors. That's why I didn't phrase it as a general rule. In particular it may be useful for more established companies to. If a startup has to, though, they're probably doomed.
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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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Wait, what about:
"Sometimes, in desperation, competitors would try to introduce features that we didn't have. But with Lisp our development cycle was so fast that we could sometimes duplicate a new feature within a day or two of a competitor announcing it in a press release."
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These were never features that mattered to users (or we'd have already had them) but more the sort that would be in checklists in articles. So although it was amusing to do, I doubt it ever made our users happier or got us new ones.
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Though I'm not a VC, I rarely ask about competitors. Asking about the growth rate tells me all I need to know.
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But, in enterprise tech u got to think about competition as ammunition for sales objections at a minimum. I agree it’s time wasted - but, you see the forcing function here.
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In enterprise software companies you probably do have to think about competitors. You're selling against them.
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