4 ms·

>"It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is, or how fast you ship features. The market you’re in will determine most of your growth. For better or worse, Gu

>"It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is, or how fast you ship features. The market you’re in will determine most of your growth. For better or worse, Gumroad grew at roughly the same rate almost every month because that’s how quickly the market determined we would grow". This speaks to me a lot, saw the same thing in asset management over the last decade: Most of the smart, alpha focused strategies that demanded a lot of effort and mastery of the markets ended up losing out to simply getting a lot of beta in the portfolio and not touching it too much.

withinboredom 3y ago
The problem with always trying to be first? If you trip and fall, you're screwed. While staying behind, you can just wait and not make the same mistakes as the people in front of you. Eventually, you'll be able to sprint ahead, but when you do, make it count.
- neom 3y ago
  Second market mover advantage, something Apple happens to be very very good at.
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    They have an interesting second-to-first mover pattern. Technically they are often a late mover, but with so much better market fit that they essentially create a new market definition in which they are clearly first. When they get it right. They have their out of the gate failures too.
    - ljf 3y ago
      Brilliant summary here of how Apple often focus on 'Why' you need something - rather than pushing the 'What' it is. They smashed this for the ipod, the iphone and the ipad - and more recently with headphones. Will be interesting to see if they can manage this for VR. 'Start with Why': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&vl=en
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        the iphone, in my opinion, was a bit of an accidental success. I remember having a Nokia at the time... The itouch came out first, and some people were like "omg, I wish this was my phone!" and some of us said, "I don't want people to interrupt me while listening to my music." Here's the thing though, they cost "around" the same amount (after AT&T subscriber subsidies). So, which one would you get, even if you didn't want people to call you while you are listening to music? If you had AT&T, anyway. If you didn't have AT&T, you couldn't use the phone at all. The internet was a thing, but not as you know it today, but Facebook was still kinda new (it had just rolled out to everyone IIRC, or was about to, instead of being limited to universities). The "hashtag" was brand new and still kind of 'wtf is this?' and limited to certain circles. Apps were basically toys and games, nothing like what we have today. In fact, when the itouch launched, there were no apps. I got one hot off the shelf and was disappointed with the battery life while listening to music. I think the only "app" it had was a web browser and notes. My peers around me, didn't really think it was interesting. I didn't get an iPhone until ~2016, when my wife started giving me crap about blue bubbles. Before that, I used Windows Phone simply because it was a phone first, and a computer second. That probably won't make sense to most people, but we're talking about "low power modes" that allowed the phone to last until you got home from the bars at 2am. I was always the one who still had juice to call a cab. Modern phones have all these features, but they really didn't until ~2015ish (android) and 2018ish (apple), while windows phone had it from the very beginning in 2009ish.
        Nevermark 3y ago
        They nailed it. Nobody else had anything like the iPhone or iTouch when they came out. After their first successes, Palm stalled. Microsoft’s phones were interface abominations. I suffered through both. Adding the App Store completed Apple’s redefinition of what a phone was, what mobile computing was. Kudo’s to Google for leaping into that new market by redirecting Android. Every manufacturer that tried to keep up by upgrading their previous platforms bit the dust.
        withinboredom 3y ago

withinboredom 3y ago

The problem with always trying to be first? If you trip and fall, you're screwed. While staying behind, you can just wait and not make the same mistakes as the people in front of you. Eventually, you'll be able to sprint ahead, but when you do, make it count.

neom 3y ago
Second market mover advantage, something Apple happens to be very very good at.
- Nevermark 3y ago
  They have an interesting second-to-first mover pattern. Technically they are often a late mover, but with so much better market fit that they essentially create a new market definition in which they are clearly first. When they get it right. They have their out of the gate failures too.
  - ljf 3y ago
    Brilliant summary here of how Apple often focus on 'Why' you need something - rather than pushing the 'What' it is. They smashed this for the ipod, the iphone and the ipad - and more recently with headphones. Will be interesting to see if they can manage this for VR. 'Start with Why': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&vl=en
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      the iphone, in my opinion, was a bit of an accidental success. I remember having a Nokia at the time... The itouch came out first, and some people were like "omg, I wish this was my phone!" and some of us said, "I don't want people to interrupt me while listening to my music." Here's the thing though, they cost "around" the same amount (after AT&T subscriber subsidies). So, which one would you get, even if you didn't want people to call you while you are listening to music? If you had AT&T, anyway. If you didn't have AT&T, you couldn't use the phone at all. The internet was a thing, but not as you know it today, but Facebook was still kinda new (it had just rolled out to everyone IIRC, or was about to, instead of being limited to universities). The "hashtag" was brand new and still kind of 'wtf is this?' and limited to certain circles. Apps were basically toys and games, nothing like what we have today. In fact, when the itouch launched, there were no apps. I got one hot off the shelf and was disappointed with the battery life while listening to music. I think the only "app" it had was a web browser and notes. My peers around me, didn't really think it was interesting. I didn't get an iPhone until ~2016, when my wife started giving me crap about blue bubbles. Before that, I used Windows Phone simply because it was a phone first, and a computer second. That probably won't make sense to most people, but we're talking about "low power modes" that allowed the phone to last until you got home from the bars at 2am. I was always the one who still had juice to call a cab. Modern phones have all these features, but they really didn't until ~2015ish (android) and 2018ish (apple), while windows phone had it from the very beginning in 2009ish.
      - Nevermark 3y ago
        They nailed it. Nobody else had anything like the iPhone or iTouch when they came out. After their first successes, Palm stalled. Microsoft’s phones were interface abominations. I suffered through both. Adding the App Store completed Apple’s redefinition of what a phone was, what mobile computing was. Kudo’s to Google for leaping into that new market by redirecting Android. Every manufacturer that tried to keep up by upgrading their previous platforms bit the dust.
        withinboredom 3y ago