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Totally agree with PG on this. This isn’t the first time he says this obviously and has put a lot of thought into this. The quote I really like from him on thi

by lbacaj 8y ago

Totally agree with PG on this. This isn’t the first time he says this obviously and has put a lot of thought into this. The quote I really like from him on this topic is: “A startup worrying about competitors is like a fat guy smoking a cigarette as he worries about contracting West Nile Virus.” I like to remind my two friends helping me build our side project right now of this reality all the time. There are so many things that could kill us at this stage, a competitor is the least likely.

aboutruby 8y ago
Link to mentioned quote: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/398642023529345024?lang=en https://twitter.com/paulg/status/398642023529345024?lang=en (7 Nov 2013)
- lbacaj 8y ago
  Nice, good find.
- 3o4xkp 8y ago
  https://i.imgur.com/1PmAL1K.png https://i.imgur.com/1PmAL1K.png What's wrong when a grown man says something like that? Are phthalates to blame?
  - Simon_says 8y ago
    Adipose tissue is estrogenizing.
zebraflask 8y ago
There is a grain of truth to the hyperbole. Too much focus on what competitors are doing takes away time and effort from the inevitable laundry list of things your own company ought to be doing, regardless.
tasty_freeze 8y ago
It is like worrying about the fate of mankind when the Sun goes red giant when we have a hundred other more immediate concerns that could wipe out humanity.
sitkack 8y ago
This makes me think of the relationship between gestation time and maximum age of the organism and the number of offspring. Maybe the next VC craze will be handing groups of 20 year olds 10k$ and some advice.
- chii 8y ago
  > groups of 20 year olds 10k$ and some advice. not that bad of an idea imho. a VC fund with 100mil can fund 10,000 groups of kids this way. Gives kids new opportunities socially (reduces teen delinquency), and the VC could hope to recoup if/when one of them becomes unicorn status.
  - katzgrau 8y ago
    That's a horrible idea. Whoever is in charge of this fund is responsible for dolling out 100mm of other people's money. How in the world does this group of investors responsibly filter and vet 10,000 suitable companies in a time effective manner? How do you effectively keep track of the founders and the money? Are checks being written to 20 year olds without much scrutiny in the hope that a unicorn shows up without any real statistical basis for expecting such an event? I'd steer clear of that fund.
    - Sileni 8y ago
      Eh, call it a non-profit or charity. Give the kids who show promise in tech a chance to just start running instead of taking the typical college route. I doubt it'd be on the scale of 10k companies, but a thousand a year? That could be doable. Have the contracts be very generous towards the "students", and try to make up the difference with donations and alumni contributions. It'd essentially become a new form of secondary education, a trade school for tech in a sense.
    - rwmj 8y ago
      > How in the world does this group of investors responsibly filter and vet 10,000 suitable companies in a time effective manner? How do you effectively keep track of the founders and the money? Sounds like whoever solves this will go on to be a very successful VC. Perhaps an application for AI, or a crowd-sourcing model?
mateo1 8y ago
>“A startup worrying about competitors is like a fat guy smoking a cigarette as he worries about contracting West Nile Virus.” It is really important for the fat guy to determine if he is near Nile River, or an area infected with the WN virus and work out the chances of contracting the virus. Sure a startup is "flimsy" in many ways, but doing good and adequate market research, determining what you have to offer that is better than current competition (when it exists) and considering if it's worth it is definitely something to thing about. Worrying isn't useful, researching and planning is. If you have competition, study it and include it in your considerations and plans.
- abraae 8y ago
  > It is really important for the fat guy to determine if he is near Nile River, or an area infected with the WN virus and work out the chances of contracting the virus. The fat guy should certainly do that, but first of all he should quit smoking and eating KFC. Those are more existential threats.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
"A startup worrying about competitors is like a fat guy smoking a cigarette as he worries about contracting West Nile Virus.” That's actually really, really good. It's super hard to adequately express ideas of "just do this (positive, constructive) thing and don't worry so much about (all the wildly unlikely things people routinely worry about instead)." But that remark does a surprisingly good job of capturing some important elements of the concept.
skrebbel 8y ago
This is the key quote, because it implies that PG thinks that a startup is like a fat guy who smokes. In other words, you're highly likely to go bust, and competition is lower on the list of reasons you could go bust than many others (shit product, no market, wrong market, founder infighting, etc). It's because he focuses solely on high-risk-high-reward companies. His insight might not be as useful if you're not running a high-risk enterprise. At the other extreme of the risk spectrum, if you're opening a new gas station, it may be useful to check where the current gas stations are. If competition can put a serious dent in your business then either you're so big that you can't reasonably be called a startup anymore (eg Instagram vs Snapchat, Uber vs Lyft eg), or your market is too small to be considered a "high risk, high reward" company (and thus you're not a startup by PG's definition).

by lbacaj 8y ago

aboutruby 8y ago

Link to mentioned quote: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/398642023529345024?lang=en https://twitter.com/paulg/status/398642023529345024?lang=en (7 Nov 2013)

lbacaj 8y ago
Nice, good find.
3o4xkp 8y ago
https://i.imgur.com/1PmAL1K.png https://i.imgur.com/1PmAL1K.png What's wrong when a grown man says something like that? Are phthalates to blame?
- Simon_says 8y ago
  Adipose tissue is estrogenizing.

zebraflask 8y ago

There is a grain of truth to the hyperbole. Too much focus on what competitors are doing takes away time and effort from the inevitable laundry list of things your own company ought to be doing, regardless.

tasty_freeze 8y ago

It is like worrying about the fate of mankind when the Sun goes red giant when we have a hundred other more immediate concerns that could wipe out humanity.

sitkack 8y ago

This makes me think of the relationship between gestation time and maximum age of the organism and the number of offspring. Maybe the next VC craze will be handing groups of 20 year olds 10k$ and some advice.

chii 8y ago
> groups of 20 year olds 10k$ and some advice. not that bad of an idea imho. a VC fund with 100mil can fund 10,000 groups of kids this way. Gives kids new opportunities socially (reduces teen delinquency), and the VC could hope to recoup if/when one of them becomes unicorn status.
- katzgrau 8y ago
  That's a horrible idea. Whoever is in charge of this fund is responsible for dolling out 100mm of other people's money. How in the world does this group of investors responsibly filter and vet 10,000 suitable companies in a time effective manner? How do you effectively keep track of the founders and the money? Are checks being written to 20 year olds without much scrutiny in the hope that a unicorn shows up without any real statistical basis for expecting such an event? I'd steer clear of that fund.
  - Sileni 8y ago
    Eh, call it a non-profit or charity. Give the kids who show promise in tech a chance to just start running instead of taking the typical college route. I doubt it'd be on the scale of 10k companies, but a thousand a year? That could be doable. Have the contracts be very generous towards the "students", and try to make up the difference with donations and alumni contributions. It'd essentially become a new form of secondary education, a trade school for tech in a sense.
  - rwmj 8y ago
    > How in the world does this group of investors responsibly filter and vet 10,000 suitable companies in a time effective manner? How do you effectively keep track of the founders and the money? Sounds like whoever solves this will go on to be a very successful VC. Perhaps an application for AI, or a crowd-sourcing model?

mateo1 8y ago

>“A startup worrying about competitors is like a fat guy smoking a cigarette as he worries about contracting West Nile Virus.” It is really important for the fat guy to determine if he is near Nile River, or an area infected with the WN virus and work out the chances of contracting the virus. Sure a startup is "flimsy" in many ways, but doing good and adequate market research, determining what you have to offer that is better than current competition (when it exists) and considering if it's worth it is definitely something to thing about. Worrying isn't useful, researching and planning is. If you have competition, study it and include it in your considerations and plans.

abraae 8y ago
> It is really important for the fat guy to determine if he is near Nile River, or an area infected with the WN virus and work out the chances of contracting the virus. The fat guy should certainly do that, but first of all he should quit smoking and eating KFC. Those are more existential threats.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

"A startup worrying about competitors is like a fat guy smoking a cigarette as he worries about contracting West Nile Virus.” That's actually really, really good. It's super hard to adequately express ideas of "just do this (positive, constructive) thing and don't worry so much about (all the wildly unlikely things people routinely worry about instead)." But that remark does a surprisingly good job of capturing some important elements of the concept.

skrebbel 8y ago

This is the key quote, because it implies that PG thinks that a startup is like a fat guy who smokes. In other words, you're highly likely to go bust, and competition is lower on the list of reasons you could go bust than many others (shit product, no market, wrong market, founder infighting, etc). It's because he focuses solely on high-risk-high-reward companies. His insight might not be as useful if you're not running a high-risk enterprise. At the other extreme of the risk spectrum, if you're opening a new gas station, it may be useful to check where the current gas stations are. If competition can put a serious dent in your business then either you're so big that you can't reasonably be called a startup anymore (eg Instagram vs Snapchat, Uber vs Lyft eg), or your market is too small to be considered a "high risk, high reward" company (and thus you're not a startup by PG's definition).