En Route to Saenthood: #6 Fear of Competition
This series is about what I’m learning, observing and experiencing while building my startup Saent (pronounce “Saint”). The good, the bad and especially the ugly, each time in under 500 words.
Episode from the daily thriller called Product Hunt.
I’m not sure about you, but opening the Product Hunt email updates is a daily thriller for me.
It’s not that I necessarily think a competitor coming out with a similar (or, Lord behold, the same) idea will instantly kill us. In fact, over the years I’ve learned it’s probably a good sign.
It signals the market is ready, as opposed to launching something too early. Then there’s the factor of execution, which can be summed up like this:
It seems the idea for this formula comes from Derek Sivers, while Crew turned it into this nice illustration.
Even if someone comes up with the same idea, there’s still a good chance they mess up their execution (note to self: so could I).
Then why does my heartbeat shift into higher gear, every time I open those Product Hunt emails?
I have no doubt that, at this exact moment, someone out there is working on a very similar idea to mine (if this is you, please do say hello ☺).
History has shown, people come up with similar inventions simultaneously, yet independently. There is even term for it: multiple discovery.
The most famous cases?
- Evolution, by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
- The crossbow, invented independently in China, Greece, Africa, northern Canada and Baltic countries.
- Calculus, by Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and others.
People see the same things happening in the world. They get access to similar knowledge. One thing leads to another and… BOOM! Two creative minds both have the same Eureka! moment.
Now that we’re all more connected than ever before, we’re also bound to have more people come up with exactly the same ideas in tandem.
Then what to do about those Product Hunt emails?
I guess each extra day of not having a known competitor seems like a blessing. Opening those mails gives me a mix of shivers and excitement: “Will there be a competitor in there today? Is someone beating me to it?”
But as I’m writing this, I realise I’m fooling myself. Rather to have a known known, than an unknown known: I know you’re out there, I just don’t know who you are and what stage you’re at.
So here’s to you, my currently unknown competitor. I look forward to meeting some day in the future, to engage in a fierce competition based on execution!
This clearly isn’t Product Hunt, but provided a similar shock when my friend Jaap sent this through. Author Nir Eyal uses almost exactly the same headline as we had on our product landing page.
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