3 ms·

It's not about the second mover advantage anymore (and certainly not about the first mover advantage). It's all about the LAST mover these days. Doesn't matter

by jdimov 12y ago

It's not about the second mover advantage anymore (and certainly not about the first mover advantage). It's all about the LAST mover these days. Doesn't matter how many others have tried something before your or how successful those somethings are. Can you create an app / a business which will be the LAST to dominate its space?

vonklaus 12y ago
Right. Google is successful because it was the last search engine. It provided a completely novel way to do search (links vs. keywords) and Facebook will be valuable if it turns out to be the last social network. However, to be the LAST MOVER you have to provide a value at some arbitrary, but huge, number. Let's say a 10x improvement over the incumbant (or various substitute products). That is why email is difficult to dethrone. It works well, is relatively secure (you can sort of choose your level of security) and spam settings make it reasonably painless. So this app is going to have to be a much better experience than hangouts (probably easy, hangouts is shit), or whatsapp, or email, or a phonecall, or instagram etc. This can be done, but the execution has to be perfect, the value proposition has to be 10x better than the one or two substitute services it replaces (largely phone & messaging) and it has to have a growth pattern that is substantial enough that it can be reasonably assumed that at least 80% of my contacts are using it. so to be last mover here they probably need >a product that is 10x better than a combo(or stand alone instance) of SMS/messaging apps/email/facetime/phone etc >widespread user adoption >trust/security >a revenue stream It seems cool, but it is a tough space to dominate.
- anentropic 12y ago
  um... didn't it become the 'last search engine' because it was so successful rather than vice versa?
  - vonklaus 12y ago
    I meant successful in financial terms. It is past edit, so I can't change it to valuable. This is basically an adoption of things Peter Theil says. Googles value (financial) has largely been realized many years after founding (prob 10). So if they did not have last mover inertia, then they wouldn't have been around long enough to extract the value from the market.
atlbeer 12y ago
You are missing a beat here. The last mover is the winner of a space. It's kind of like saying I found my car keys in the last place I looked. Of course you did.
- bentcorner 12y ago
  But how do you stay the last mover? This is about building a moat. To continue your analogy: How do you prevent yourself from losing your car keys again?

by jdimov 12y ago

vonklaus 12y ago

Right. Google is successful because it was the last search engine. It provided a completely novel way to do search (links vs. keywords) and Facebook will be valuable if it turns out to be the last social network. However, to be the LAST MOVER you have to provide a value at some arbitrary, but huge, number. Let's say a 10x improvement over the incumbant (or various substitute products). That is why email is difficult to dethrone. It works well, is relatively secure (you can sort of choose your level of security) and spam settings make it reasonably painless. So this app is going to have to be a much better experience than hangouts (probably easy, hangouts is shit), or whatsapp, or email, or a phonecall, or instagram etc. This can be done, but the execution has to be perfect, the value proposition has to be 10x better than the one or two substitute services it replaces (largely phone & messaging) and it has to have a growth pattern that is substantial enough that it can be reasonably assumed that at least 80% of my contacts are using it. so to be last mover here they probably need >a product that is 10x better than a combo(or stand alone instance) of SMS/messaging apps/email/facetime/phone etc >widespread user adoption >trust/security >a revenue stream It seems cool, but it is a tough space to dominate.

anentropic 12y ago
um... didn't it become the 'last search engine' because it was so successful rather than vice versa?
- vonklaus 12y ago
  I meant successful in financial terms. It is past edit, so I can't change it to valuable. This is basically an adoption of things Peter Theil says. Googles value (financial) has largely been realized many years after founding (prob 10). So if they did not have last mover inertia, then they wouldn't have been around long enough to extract the value from the market.

atlbeer 12y ago

You are missing a beat here. The last mover is the winner of a space. It's kind of like saying I found my car keys in the last place I looked. Of course you did.

bentcorner 12y ago
But how do you stay the last mover? This is about building a moat. To continue your analogy: How do you prevent yourself from losing your car keys again?