These are great points. Most developers I know find that the most difficult part of product development is sales. Design is also difficult but I'd recommend tr

These are great points. Most developers I know find that the most difficult part of product development is sales. Design is also difficult but I'd recommend treating it as a process rather than a project when it comes to new products in new businesses. Design will never be done and it can always be improved, copycats will always be two steps behind or they'll fork into a different direction. I know of financially successful products where the teams behind them don't know why the design they have works. They've even had situations where they've improved the design in their view and it's been well received in user testing. But when they release it, it has a negative impact on sales, retention or some other core metric. Imagine trying to copy a counter intuitive system like that? If you have something where the core value is obvious and can be copied with ease you've probably released too late. Even in that case it would be pretty impressive if your marketing was so good that it found someone who could copy it. After removing the design part there are still very few people in the world with the time and resources to focus on building a copy right now. I'd guess that most people who think about copying will more likely become very good customers of yours, they can then have more time to work on their own ideas.