Have you read Peter Thiel's book Zero to One? He talks about the problem with pursuing tournaments, where people are competing over a fixed opportunity. He used

Have you read Peter Thiel's book Zero to One? He talks about the problem with pursuing tournaments, where people are competing over a fixed opportunity. He used his own experience as a student, a student at Stanford's law school, and then as a hopeful Supreme Court clerkship appointee. At each level he succeeded and found only fiercer competition at the next. Finally, he failed. He didn't get the prestigious appointment as a Supreme Court clerk. Not long after, he left and did something almost nobody else was doing and the result was Paypal, which made him wealthy and lead to his future as one of the most successful VCs of our era. Essentially, he said, "Competition is for losers. Go create something nobody else is and build it into a defensible business (i.e. a monopoly on something)."