on competition

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

“Traditional competition forces us to take on an attitude of winning. A Worthy Rival inspires us to take on an attitude of improvement. The former focuses our attention on the outcome, the latter focuses our attention on process. That simple shift in perspective immediately changes how we see our own businesses. It is the focus on process and

Of course, we should also keep in mind "do not compete for the sake of competition". Sometimes, after a prolonged period of competition, the only goal becomes simply beating the competitor. For example, in the Microsoft-Google competition, Microsoft for a long time saw defeating Google as its goal, and invested heavily in search. It wasn't until a

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.

Cirque du Soleil succeeded because it realized that to win in the future, companies must stop competing with each other. The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition.

Gause’s principle (evolution): Two species that coexist and compete for limited resources cannot continue at constant populations – one will eventually push the other into extinction or weakness. It’s the same in business: Without some sort of differentiating edge, companies that directly compete against one another often resemble a death match. I