
You only compete with one thing

If you have conviction in your own ideas and approach, then you should be the most competitive with yourself. Your past personal best—your most productive week, your most efficient sprint, your best-executed event—is what you need to beat. Competing with your past is the purest and surest way to make faster progress without compromising your vision
... See moreScott Belsky • The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture
No one else is competing with you. You’re in your own world of creativity and innovation. For you, because you’re continually pushing your boundaries, it’s intense and hard, but it’s also extremely liberating. To not be free is much harder than being free.
Dan Sullivan • 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less
“At both Viaweb and YC, every minute I spent thinking about competitors was, in retrospect, a minute wasted... It's exceptionally rare for startups to be killed by competitors — so rare that you can almost discount the possibility... Inexperienced founders usually give competitors more credit than they deserve. Whether you succeed depends far more
... See moreCompetition is good, or at least not an extinction risk; over half of billion-dollar startups competed with large incumbents at the time of founding. It’s good to compete with incumbents or compete in fragmented markets; they are easier to beat than a highly funded startup with the same idea. Remember Zoom’s founder telling the story of competing a
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