

Is First-Mover Advantage a Myth? (with graphs) - inmygarage
http://savemefrombschool.com/2010/02/is-first-mover-advantage-a-myth-with-graphs/

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patrickgzill
I know one of the guys from Dell's early days (he was in charge of DOS and
Windows 3.1) ... he said their strategy was to definitely NOT be "first mover"
; instead they focused on being "fast follower", as soon as a technology was
starting to gain adoption in the marketplace Dell would try to come out with
an offering for it.

This may not work in all cases, but it sure worked for Dell...

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indiejade
A good article, but not a new theory.

Two schools of thought regarding optimal competitive strategy:

(1) "Traditional" economic input/output model: first-mover is a definite
advantage, especially if being "first to market" allows a company to put up
barriers to entry (or to influence any of the other "five forces") in the
traditional economic model. Example would be patenting new technology.

(2) "Hypercompetitive" model: becoming more apparent in the digital age, and
especially pertainent to web-only companies. Rather than "reacting" to moves
of competitors, firms in a hypercompetitive market must predict and prepare
for competitive moves from their rivals.

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inmygarage
So then, given the current state of software patents (seems like they're
difficult to attain and even more difficult to defend) how are you supposed to
put up barriers to entry as a consumer web company? Are there examples of
web/internet companies in the last 5-10 years that have succeeded by following
#1?

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indiejade
There's a difference between "first mover" and "first to market". First movers
enter a market space first. First to market means that a company has launched
an actual product within that market space. Startups all the time get funded
with "just an idea," and even generate "buzz" or whatnot, but the real winners
tend to be those who have their niche well-planned enough to effectively
utilize those traditional market-force "forces" to their advantage. There are
five of them: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_forces>

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jasonwilk
It's true, there are no first mover advantages on the web anymore. If you have
an idea that doesn't exist already, it's probably for a seriously good reason
or it does exist somewhere and is performing poorly enough that you can't even
find it after browsing 10 pages deep on a keyword search. What i learned from
Ben Horrowitz, was that you need to find something that does work and has
current market share (and market size), and make it 10x better. Making things
10x better and going after a defined market is the way to go. Forget the
trending discussions of 1995-2005 that consisted of 'finding web concepts that
no one had hacked up yet'.

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coryl
Interesting theory, quite plausible in the web industry because everything
moves so fast, as well as almost no barriers to competitive entry.

Luck is so much a factor in timing.

