on competition

More heads down, less looking around.

You only compete with one thing

I love this re-framing of competition by Jason Fried: “When it comes to business, I've always preferred the term "alternative" to "competitor" when addressing other options in the market.”

I think the first point of treating competitors with an ordinary mind is to see competition as the norm. Don't try to escape the competition, it's a good thing. I don't even think that competition should be ended by doing M&A. We see a lot of companies that eliminate their rivals through M&A becoming complacent and end up slacking off.

Zhang Yiming • Zhang Yiming’s Last Speech: Part II

Mike Krieger (founder of Instagram) when Lenny asks him how he thinks about Claude vs. ChatGPT:

“Look yourself in the mirror and embrace who you are and what you could be rather than like who others are is maybe the, the way I've been looking you at it”

Mike when Lenny asks him what is still helpful for product teams to do now that we have AI:

“One

‘Do not try to be the best. Be the only.’ It helps me believe in a positive-sum world—where my success does not hinge on the failure of others, and I am not in a rat-race.” — Nishant Jain

Caroline Cala Donofrio • The Best Advice I've Ever Heard

And so the more authentic you are to who you are, and what you love to do, the less competition you’re gonna have. So, you can escape competition through authenticity when you realize that no one can compete with you on being you. And normally that would have been useless advice pre-internet. Post-internet you can turn that into a career.

Naval Ravikant • The Internet Has Massively Broadened Career Possibilities

Brian at Reforge says: One of my strong beliefs is that startups should rarely think about competitors and most should think about alternatives. Alternatives are the other ways your target audience are solving the problem today. If you focus on competitors, you are likely to make three critical mistakes: 1. You Will Lack Differentiation - When

I've been asked many times some variation of the question "how do you deal with the competition?" There are many answers to this question; in this essay, I want to give one: wait until they die .

Befriending the Goon Squad · Applied Cartography

“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