Screw Your Brilliant Business Idea

People love the idea of being first into a market, because it offers the illusion that you won't have any competition. In the real world, by the time there's a significant market for your product you'll have plenty of competitors, all of whom had the luxury of learning from your mistakes.

The best markets are the ones that have been around long enough to establish a demand, but not long enough that anyone has released a definitive product yet. Think mp3 players before the iPod or search engines prior to Google.

Was anybody else bothered by the giant moving spammy pop-up on that site? I'm currently reading on an iPhone and it took up practically the whole screen.

Being an entrepreneur is too much work for you? Good, that leaves more room for the rest of us.

'Being first is not always best'

A well-known fact to HN readers: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=google+first+mov...