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Startups

Netflix realized that there’s no point competing head-on with HBO’s subscription streaming service because customers didn’t treat Netflix as a replacement for HBO.

They wanted both.

They wanted both because both channels contained shows they love. So Netflix competes by keeping up the quality of their exclusive content.

You can’t win a battle that’s not being fought. Know where you stand in the eyes of your customers before you charge for the beachhead.

Startups

Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn once famously said:

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.

Perfectionism kills momentum. Don't be a perfectionist. Be a just-good-enoughist. Be a minimum-viable-productist. ⠀

And if you're a perfectionist you're probably cringing right now 🙂

Startups

"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one."

Specialists or generalists? That's been the age-old question.

The answer is, both are necessary. Entrepreneurs need to be jacks of all trades by necessity. Early stage startups need to hire jacks of all trades. Jacks

The more you start growing roots and getting established, however, you need to bring in the specialists.

The generalists are great at bootstrapping, getting things started and making magic happen. They are not really good at perfection. That's what specialists are for. They take things the generalists started, and carry them to their ultimate destiny.

General

I hear a lot of hasbeenpreneurs complain that they quit because there was too much competition.

The thing is, if you don't have any competition you are probably in the wrong place. There is probably a good reason no one else is doing what you are doing.

Seth Godin recently wrote about this:

Competition is a signal. It means that you're offering something that's not crazy. Competition gives people reassurance. Competition makes it easier to get your point across. Competition helps us understand that people like us do things like this.

Startups

Reid Hoffman argues that the best ideas will always get rejected on first glance. “If you’re laughed out of the room, it might actually be a good sign” says Reid.

This is because the best ideas are contrarian by nature, and contrarian opinions usually get rejected by the status quo. There might be a big blue ocean waiting for you if you can only wade through the sea of “no”s.

Listen to the full discussion here.