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Apple came after Blackberry. Dell came after Commodore / Amiga. Facebook came after MySpace. Google came after Altavisa and Yahoo. Verizon came after AOL. Alter

Apple came after Blackberry. Dell came after Commodore / Amiga. Facebook came after MySpace. Google came after Altavisa and Yahoo. Verizon came after AOL. Alternating Current came after Direct Current. Microsoft Word came after WordPerfect. Chrome came after Netscape Communicator. Python came after Perl. Nintendo came after Atari. I feel like first movers advantage is a myth.

nkozyra 4y ago
> I feel like first movers advantage is a myth. Maybe. No company lives forever, at some point all of these things will be unseated. But those first movers had pretty good runs, as far as technology companies go. Maybe they aren't still #1 but if you're #1 for a decade or more, that might be as much as any one company can "win" here.
ericlewis 4y ago
Apple came after blackberry, but as the parent comment states... you have to be much better and by all accounts the iPhone was much better at things consumers cared about. Dell made better computers. Facebook was nicer than myspace in UI/UX. Google returned superior results. So their point stands. They have to be much better. And all of these were.
- smachiz 4y ago
  Yes, basically, when you stop innovating and are only doing incremental improvement, someone is going to come and eat your lunch.
KMnO4 4y ago
I think you confirmed what he was saying. All of those products that came after are better than the first movers. If Apple was worse than BB, do you think it would have won?
edgyquant 4y ago
Every single one of those things you just listed is an improvement in one or more ways (to the average user.) So I really don’t see your point at all
KKKKkkkk1 4y ago
> Apple came after Blackberry. Apple and specifically Jony Ive started the development of a handheld computer in the early 90s. Apple was definitely not a second comer to that market. https://www.businessinsider.com/jony-ives-first-apple-design-2014-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/jony-ives-first-apple-design...
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  > Apple and specifically Jony Ive started the development of a handheld computer in the early 90s. Apple was definitely not a second comer to that market. That's an odd way to define "not a second comer". The Apple Newton was a PDA, but it wasn't the first to hit the market. Sure, it was in development before that, but that's true of every device that was released in that generation. And besides, "first mover advantage" doesn't refer to the first to begin research on a product; it refers to the first to release a product into the market.
- tapoxi 4y ago
  Well the Newton was the second attempt by Apple, first they spun off General Magic and then pivoted when GM built hype and Apple remained a minority owner.
xorcist 4y ago
One thing a lot of people misremembers is just how long it took. Microsoft Word was launched only couple of years after WordPerfect, in the early 80s. It didn't dominate word processing until the middle of the 90s. It took more than a decade. They basically built out the features and waited until their competitors made some strategic mistake, of which they made several in that decade. It was pretty much the same with Netscape and MSIE. That monopoly misuse probably helped, but Netscape also seemed bent on killing itself. Despite the mismanagement, it still took almost five years. Perl was more popular than Python for more than a decade. Having much of the early web developed on it didn't help in the long run. First mover advantage might be a thing, but it never wins in the long run. And in the long run, ten years is nothing.
- neilv 4y ago
  > They basically built out the features and waited until their competitors made some strategic mistake, Microsoft Word was a loser, but then they changed out the operating system under the winners.
  - filmgirlcw 4y ago
    Yes, but the winner also refused to get with the times and embrace the operating system twice. First, they were abysmally slow to Windows 3.1, despite having years to get something together (in part b/c they understood that Microsoft wanted to win at word processing but they underestimated the importance of being on the OS anyway) and then a few years later with Windows 95. Word Perfect had the OS changed from under them but also had every warning that the change was coming and refused to move to sturdier ground.
    - neilv 4y ago
      That's too bad. It was pretty easy to write off Windows 3.1, and continue to be a solid solution on MS-DOS and with Netware, etc. But Windows 95 had a lot of fanfare in advance that suggested it would have much better uptake. And Windows NT in parallel was developing a credible foundation, and it got the "new shell" as an option around the time of Win95. My recollection at the time was that the writing should've been on the wall, that Windows was going to be the Microsoft platform. If WordPerfect was slow to move, that's a bad combination with, er, not as direct of access to the platform teams.
mindcrime 4y ago
I feel like first movers advantage is a myth. I don't think there's any question that there is an advantage to being a first mover. What I think is a mistake is thinking that it's an absolute advantage, and/or not recognizing that it's also true that there are advantages to to not being the first mover. I mean, there's a reason why the "fast follower strategy"[1] exists as well. I think in reality though, all of this is over-simplifying things. There are a LOT of variables in the equation for "does this product succeed or not" where "being first to market" is just one of those variables. [1]: https://fourweekmba.com/fast-follower/ https://fourweekmba.com/fast-follower/
- MisterPea 4y ago
  First movers without a fast follower is a huge advantage. There's a great conference talk with Bezos about how he mentioned with disruptive products, there's usually a fast follower entering into the competition - but he was surprised at how long it took other companies to copy AWS. Similarly with Tesla

nkozyra 4y ago

> I feel like first movers advantage is a myth. Maybe. No company lives forever, at some point all of these things will be unseated. But those first movers had pretty good runs, as far as technology companies go. Maybe they aren't still #1 but if you're #1 for a decade or more, that might be as much as any one company can "win" here.

ericlewis 4y ago

Apple came after blackberry, but as the parent comment states... you have to be much better and by all accounts the iPhone was much better at things consumers cared about. Dell made better computers. Facebook was nicer than myspace in UI/UX. Google returned superior results. So their point stands. They have to be much better. And all of these were.

smachiz 4y ago
Yes, basically, when you stop innovating and are only doing incremental improvement, someone is going to come and eat your lunch.

KMnO4 4y ago

I think you confirmed what he was saying. All of those products that came after are better than the first movers. If Apple was worse than BB, do you think it would have won?

edgyquant 4y ago

Every single one of those things you just listed is an improvement in one or more ways (to the average user.) So I really don’t see your point at all

KKKKkkkk1 4y ago

> Apple came after Blackberry. Apple and specifically Jony Ive started the development of a handheld computer in the early 90s. Apple was definitely not a second comer to that market. https://www.businessinsider.com/jony-ives-first-apple-design-2014-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/jony-ives-first-apple-design...

chimeracoder 4y ago
> Apple and specifically Jony Ive started the development of a handheld computer in the early 90s. Apple was definitely not a second comer to that market. That's an odd way to define "not a second comer". The Apple Newton was a PDA, but it wasn't the first to hit the market. Sure, it was in development before that, but that's true of every device that was released in that generation. And besides, "first mover advantage" doesn't refer to the first to begin research on a product; it refers to the first to release a product into the market.
tapoxi 4y ago
Well the Newton was the second attempt by Apple, first they spun off General Magic and then pivoted when GM built hype and Apple remained a minority owner.

xorcist 4y ago

One thing a lot of people misremembers is just how long it took. Microsoft Word was launched only couple of years after WordPerfect, in the early 80s. It didn't dominate word processing until the middle of the 90s. It took more than a decade. They basically built out the features and waited until their competitors made some strategic mistake, of which they made several in that decade. It was pretty much the same with Netscape and MSIE. That monopoly misuse probably helped, but Netscape also seemed bent on killing itself. Despite the mismanagement, it still took almost five years. Perl was more popular than Python for more than a decade. Having much of the early web developed on it didn't help in the long run. First mover advantage might be a thing, but it never wins in the long run. And in the long run, ten years is nothing.

neilv 4y ago
> They basically built out the features and waited until their competitors made some strategic mistake, Microsoft Word was a loser, but then they changed out the operating system under the winners.
- filmgirlcw 4y ago
  Yes, but the winner also refused to get with the times and embrace the operating system twice. First, they were abysmally slow to Windows 3.1, despite having years to get something together (in part b/c they understood that Microsoft wanted to win at word processing but they underestimated the importance of being on the OS anyway) and then a few years later with Windows 95. Word Perfect had the OS changed from under them but also had every warning that the change was coming and refused to move to sturdier ground.
  - neilv 4y ago
    That's too bad. It was pretty easy to write off Windows 3.1, and continue to be a solid solution on MS-DOS and with Netware, etc. But Windows 95 had a lot of fanfare in advance that suggested it would have much better uptake. And Windows NT in parallel was developing a credible foundation, and it got the "new shell" as an option around the time of Win95. My recollection at the time was that the writing should've been on the wall, that Windows was going to be the Microsoft platform. If WordPerfect was slow to move, that's a bad combination with, er, not as direct of access to the platform teams.

mindcrime 4y ago

I feel like first movers advantage is a myth. I don't think there's any question that there is an advantage to being a first mover. What I think is a mistake is thinking that it's an absolute advantage, and/or not recognizing that it's also true that there are advantages to to not being the first mover. I mean, there's a reason why the "fast follower strategy"[1] exists as well. I think in reality though, all of this is over-simplifying things. There are a LOT of variables in the equation for "does this product succeed or not" where "being first to market" is just one of those variables. [1]: https://fourweekmba.com/fast-follower/ https://fourweekmba.com/fast-follower/

MisterPea 4y ago
First movers without a fast follower is a huge advantage. There's a great conference talk with Bezos about how he mentioned with disruptive products, there's usually a fast follower entering into the competition - but he was surprised at how long it took other companies to copy AWS. Similarly with Tesla