
First-Mover Advantage - godelmachine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage
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jv22222
<IMHO>

In the vast majority of cases, there is no first mover advantage. Most ideas
are not new. There will be some kind of competition already out there. In the
rare case a project is wildly successful, being known as an innovator could
result in favorable coverage, but being the first does not necessarily help
you.

For example, Lyft came before Uber, then Uber launched UberX in retaliation to
Lyft and surpassed their traction quite considerably.

Another great example is YouTube. They were not first, they just hit at the
right time. Bill Gross talks about this in his TedTalk, “The single biggest
reasons startups succeed.” Other examples of success stories that were not
first to market: Google, Facebook, Slack, Apple, etc. The list goes on and on.

Here is a good read about the subject:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-blank-first-mover-
adva...](https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-blank-first-mover-advantage-
overrated-2010-10)

</IMHO>

~~~
whoisjuan
AWS. Being the first in market not only has been their advantage but also the
struggle of the later movers like Oracle and Google.

~~~
nexuist
Was AWS really first?

> There will be some kind of competition already out there.

I remember LAMP providers and FTP'ing PHP files before AWS. I remember cPanel
and phpMyAdmin. I remember Unix boxes that gave you free user accounts w/ open
ports and everyone operated on the honor system.

While nobody could quite grasp the vast IT supply chain AWS would end up
becoming, the writing had been on the wall for years. It only made sense to
evolve from "here's a server" to "here's a server running a service" to
"here's a service" to "here's a solution." I bet quite a few people had been
dreaming of a platform like AWS by the time it came along, but of course they
likely did not have the backing of a major tech company with superstar
business leaders and tech experts (shoutout to Jeff Barr!).

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gumby
Typically it's the fast followers who succeed, especially when the first mover
has expended a lot of energy to establish the market.

"How can you tell which ones are the pioneers? They're the ones with the
arrows in their _backs_."

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tomerico
First mover advantage is valuable when every user makes your service more
valuable to other users. This makes it harder for other companies to enter the
market after a dominant player appears.

