Should you focus on your competitors?

Every day, hundres of people share Jeff Bezos's quote on not focusing on your competitors.

They are wrong. You must focus on your competitors.

Here’s why.

A month or so ago, Patrick Campbell (sold Profitwell to Paddle for $200m. Built a competitive intelligence program in Profitwell) launched his competitive research and strategy playbook in which he stated:

If you can build a 10X better product in a new emerging market and establish a monopoly, don’t focus on your competitors. Otherwise, you have to.

This advice, don’t focus on your competitors, was popularized by Peter Thiel.

Thiel argues that winning entrepreneurs build 10x better products in new markets where they can establish a monopoly.

But times have changed. Thiel’s advice is outdated because building a 10x better product isn’t possible anymore.

The barriers to building stuff – software, consumer products, media, etc – no longer exist.

That fancy app feature can be ripped off in months, not years.

Those special DTC ingredients; the factory will sell them to anyone.

So if you don’t have patentable, hard science breakthroughs or regulatory protection, you won’t have a 10x better product (or at least one that’s 10x for long).

Competition is now permanent.

If you ignore your competitors, you’ll fail to defend your flank from attacks.

Patrick also did research into 3.2k companies and discovered that those who had competitive programs had:

23.7% lower customer acquisition costs
18.9% higher customer lifetime value
15.4% higher customer satisfaction

So it isn’t just a philosophical discussion – to compete or not to compete – it clearly pays off to compete.

Maybe your world just got turned upside down, and you’re going through 5 stages of grief(don’t deny it, old bean).

But you have to start thinking about the hard things – how are we better, how are we different, etc.

Your target customers are already thinking that

Nail it, and you’ll be rewarded.

Happy competing, and go read Patrick’s competitive intelligence playbook. It’s amazing.