

Steve Blank: Someone Stole My Startup Idea (part one) - mindcrime
http://steveblank.com/2009/12/03/someone-stole-my-startup-idea-%E2%80%93-part-1-are-those-my-initials/

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mindcrime
Part two:

[http://steveblank.com/2009/12/07/someone-stole-my-startup-
id...](http://steveblank.com/2009/12/07/someone-stole-my-startup-
idea-%E2%80%93-part-2-they-raised-money-with-my-slides/)

gets even more interesting, and has a very specific point in it that seems
like all startup founders should consider:

 _Our competitor was executing on hypotheses we had developed 9 months ago,
and their strategy remained static. We on the other hand, had moved on. We had
discovered detailed information about what customers really needed and wanted
and turned our original hypotheses into facts. We had validated our new
assumptions by a set of orders, and we had pivoted on our business model. Our
original idea had been nothing more than an untested set of hypotheses. Truth
be told, we were no longer the company in those stolen slides._

 _While the common wisdom said that our success was going to be determined by
which company executed better, the common wisdom was wrong. In a startup
success isn’t about just execution, it’s how well we could take our original
hypothesis and learn, discover, iterate and execute._

