on competition
Play your own game where no one can compete with you
Tony Sheng • #07 - Erik Torenberg thinks we should build career moats
‘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
The ultimate competitive advantage is actually giving a shit about the problem you're working on. When Airbnb had just a few dozen employees, Rocket Internet raised $90 million and hired hundreds of people to clone and crush them.
Stew Fortier • Tweet
millions of dollars of funding can't compete with a company having a soul
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
... See moreCirque 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.
W. Chan Kim • Blue Ocean Strategy
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
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.”
Jeff Bezos: “You don’t understand my audience”
When Charlie Rose asks him if the iPad is a “Kindle killer” in this 2012 interview, Jeff gives an incredible response:
“It’s a very different product, and I can give you an example. If I came to you and said: ‘Charlie, I love your... See more
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