You only compete with one thing

Take Asana. It would be fair to say Basecamp competes with Asana, in a traditional sense. But in 2021 they lost $285,000,000. In 2020 they lost $210,000,000. And in 2019 they lost $118,000,000. And they're on track to lose even more with over $370,000,000 in losses booked for the trailing twelve months. That's closing in on a billion dollars in los... See more

Of course your position in the market, and the perception of your brand, influences customers' purchasing decisions. And of course you need to be in the arena to compete, so you can earn customers who provide your revenue. But you can give yourself a better chance by staying small, keeping costs in check, and building a larger margin buffer. The lo... See more

Or take HEY. HEY has tens of thousands of paying customers. For us that's a win. For Google/Gmail it would be a huge failure. They need a whole lot more to make something worth it. We need a whole lot less to make it a spectacular success. HEY has tens of thousands of users. Gmail has a billion. So are we "losing" to Gmail? Or are HEY and Gmail bot... See more

More heads down, less looking around.