on competition
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
‘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
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.”
“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
... See moreThe 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
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
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
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
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