Saved by Mo Shafieeha and
Disruption Is Not a Strategy
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the companies that have a reputation for building the best products of this generation—Slack, Figma, Superhuman, Notion, and Linear—are basically new versions of successful predecessors. These companies didn’t distract themselves with four-step strategic maneuvers or clever wedges into a new category that they ... See more
Benn Stancil • Why Are We Surprised That Startups Are So Freaking Hard?
Disruption, as theorized by Clayton Christensen in the early 1990s, is a process by which a startup offers a lower-cost product that performs worse along standard dimensions of performance for a small subset of customers outside of the mainstream. The product gets adoption, though, because it performs better on a new dimension of performance that i... See more
Can a Startup Kill ChatGPT?
The best way for a start-up to “disrupt” an industry is to be a thesis-driven outsider—someone who hasn’t been jaded by the industry but has a strong opinion for what should change. You then just have to stay alive long enough to become an expert so you can compete with the different skills and practices you bring.
Scott Belsky • The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture
Companies whose investment processes demand quantification of market sizes and financial returns before they can enter a market get paralyzed or make serious mistakes when faced with disruptive technologies. They demand market data when none exists and make judgments based upon financial projections when neither revenues or costs can, in fact, be k
... See moreMark Schwartz • War and Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age
Making a better product is a good way for a startup to die. Incumbents are so powerful that in order to challenge them, startups usually need to offer something radically different rather than simply something superior to what already exists. The only way to win is to completely alter the paradigm in such a way that incumbents can’t reconcile it wi... See more
Evan Armstrong • A New Book of the Startup Bible
Two questions will tell you whether you’re dealing with a disruptive technology or not. First, to what extent does it invalidate important traditional advantages? Second, to what extent can incumbents embrace the technology without major negative consequences for their business? If you stop and ask those questions, you’ll see that true disruptions
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