If both you and a competitor could build a feature, then it was a feature that was going to be built anyway. The art is to position and brand yourself in a way that allows you to build unique features that wouldn't be useful to a competitor because you are attacking different market segments.

If you can't position, then you become a commodity and you're competing purely on price.

This is true, and a useful book on positioning is: https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/00...

Furthermore, one way to avoid ending up in a feature for feature fight to the death with a bigger player is to think instead in terms of “job to be done”: https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done

By planning what you work on by focusing on what the customer is trying to achieve you’ll do yourself a favour when it comes to marketing as you’ll be able to speak in terms they understand.

Lastly, as you’ll see in the positioning book above, it’s not wise to completely avoid competitor analysis despite how unpleasant and draining it can sometimes be. A potential customer needs to understand why they would choose you over the incumbent. You need to know that answer before they can.

The "job to be done" is essentially just another term for the customer's need, right? To me, the main utility of that phrase is that it emphasizes the mindset of the customer much more than looking for a need.

Yes that’s my understanding but looking at it as a job to be done intuitively moves towards how they currently do the job. This can often reveal other areas where you can help.

Anyone can build a feature you can. Some market segments have existing players and people shouldn't be afraid to play competitively. You don't live in a bubble and you can innovate all day but your customers are still the same people with the same needs. Either you are solving them, in which case someone else will too. Or you are trying to sell them your toy project and convince them they have a problem that it solves. SV has burned through billions on projects that were hyper niche or had no market at all.

You can make a moat around your product, but that is different. You still have a core value proposition that solves their real world problem and there will be other people solving it too.

Most companies build moats through contractual lock in, trust and size, or simply buying their competitors. I have yet to see a feature only moat.

Supreme is the company I like to bring up as one that survives on almost 100% pure positioning. The "feature" Supreme released a few years ago was a brick with the Supreme logo on it which sold out instantly and started going on eBay for $1000.

This is a feature that no other company could have built. Every single one of Supreme's competitors could have known that Supreme would be releasing the brick and the information would be utterly useless to them because only Supreme could have released the Supreme brick.

On the one end you have Supreme and the other you have pure commodities and It's up to you to figure out where you'd like to be along that spectrum.

> I have yet to see a feature only moat.

Features that induce a significant network effect can potentially lead to a moat. No contracts necessary.

(Maybe this is what you meant when you mentioned "size" as a moat-building mechanism.)

Yep, that was the intent behind mentioning size. Google could be said to have a network effect based moat around Google Docs for example.

I think the tech world's use of the word "commodity" is interesting. "becoming a commodity" really means "fail to establish a monopoly".

That's what commodity means in economics, up to the level of precision implied by your statement.

www.investopedia.com/terms/c/commodity.asp

I think most people understand commodity as things like: iron ore, sugar, rice, chemicals, raw materials.

For example, take a Toyota Prius. Most people would not think of that as a commodity. It also is not a monopoly. If Toyota Prius where a software tech startup, they would be bemoaning the fact that they have become a "commodity" (read: it's become a competitive market where consumers have choice between differentiated goods).

You shipped 6 months ahead, therefore your game is better than the larger incumbent - so keep playing the way you were. All incumbents eventually get beaten - why not by you?

Over a long enough timeframe, the better player always wins.

This.

I’ve just spent a few days with a client who is in a bit of a fluster, as they feel their business (ten years, eight people, very healthy revenue & profit with huge blue-chip clients) is under threat from a new VC backed competitor.

I said to think of it differently - that the new competitor is so inefficient and unsure about what they are doing that they need a $100M safety blanket. Some will be dazzled by their meteoritic trail - and will get their fingers burned when they touch it.

Also, that with a small team and minimal funding you have secured robust relationships with the core clients they need to make their business a success, and have locked them out. With a small team and minimal funding, you are the guys being invited to speak at conferences - and they are having to sponsor them to get air-time.

Finally, almost verbatim, as I give this speech to both myself and others fairly frequently: “Keep your eyes in the boat, row your own race - and make them anticipate and fear your moves. The moment you worry about what is happening in their boat and how you should respond, you are rowing their race, and you have lost.”

The emergence of a new VC-backed competitor also validates your client's business.

Sure, that’s true - although the client didn’t need telling that, as they already know they’re onto a good thing - their flagship clients and steering group are industry leaders.

Either way, they went away bubbly and excited about the prospect of grinding their cocksure new competitor into sparkly dust!

I’ve seena company creating “Google Photos” two months before Google. Sometimes a competitor is really a competitor.

Because they hold the keys to the door ( Android), but Apple holds the others.

Sometimes, a competitor isn't playing the same game.

sometimes it can be flattering and frustrating at the same time. we build a feature. six months later I get a ping from a colleague our competitor the biggest in the space an established name copyed it 1:1 mind you they had this feature before but worked and looked completely different. first I was proud that they copyed us and them I was angry.

I'm in the process of ideation/brainstorming/prototyping for my very first product. I can't decide between educating myself on what my competitors are doing, or focusing on what makes my own product special.

Daniel I understand you're tenacious, but the real thing to focus on is getting the product to the point where anyone can use it to solve any problem well. Almost always this is easiest if the person that you're solving the problem for is yourself.

Take the Overcast podcast app, for example. I was one of the first users of it. The way its evolved over the years is directly because the founder uses it routinely. He didn't start by including the less obvious features right off the bat, he started by building the obvious ones. Only after he was happy with it did he start to pull in other features from other apps.

Some products you just can't do this with. I get it. I truly do, but try your best to find some sub-problem and ship it. Even if it's only to yourself.

I happened to befriend a number of successful startup founders ten years ago, before they'd made it. All the people I've seen sell companies had grit, myself included, but only the ones that shipped fast sold them for more than $Xm, myself not included.

SHIP.

(If you need more advice, better tailored to your product feel free to email me, but the most important advice will always be to ship.)

I considered a podcast app with a niche feature. But market research indicated it wasn't worth my time and I wasn't passionate enough to do it anyway. Life is balance.

You cannot make your own product special without knowing what your competitors are doing.

You have to study the entire market (which means competitors), and then see how you fit in there, and what is special.

Most products aren't that special relative to their competitors. The number of people actually coming to market with a better mousetrap is vanishingly small compared to those who just market essentially the same product or service differently or try to cut costs.

I was over the moon when my main competitor started copying my features, it meant they were always going to be one step behind me. Not only that but they would also make the same mistakes I did.