Short excerpt from a May 22, 2024 YouTube talk by Jason M. Lemkin arguing that strong founders deeply understand their competitive landscape. He emphasizes learning from competitors, notes most software categories are iterations rather than novel inventions (examples: Zoom, Salesforce), and advises founders to study both large incumbents and emerging rivals.
But oftentimes it's a sign of not a great founder, which is not understanding the competitive landscape. You have to understand the competitive landscape. The best founders are thinking all the time about their market, the big competitors. If you compete with Zoom, then they know everything about Zoom. They know every single thing about Zoom. They also know everything about the new Zoom competitor that just launched a product hunt that's even smaller than them. They know their landscape, goal. It's not necessarily because they obsess about competition. Some of us obsess more, some of us obsess less, but they know you learn from the competition. It's one of the best ways we learn. Almost no software categories are new. We're iterating on old categories. Zoom is not the first web conferencing. Salesforce is not the first CRM. Again and again and again. Very few categories are new. So we have to learn from the competition. And the best founders.
