This isn’t the first time he says this obviously and has put a lot of thought into this. The quote I really like from him on this topic is:
“A startup worrying about competitors is like a fat guy smoking a cigarette as he worries about contracting West Nile Virus.”
I like to remind my two friends helping me build our side project right now of this reality all the time. There are so many things that could kill us at this stage, a competitor is the least likely.
His insight might not be as useful if you're not running a high-risk enterprise. At the other extreme of the risk spectrum, if you're opening a new gas station, it may be useful to check where the current gas stations are.
If competition can put a serious dent in your business then either you're so big that you can't reasonably be called a startup anymore (eg Instagram vs Snapchat, Uber vs Lyft eg), or your market is too small to be considered a "high risk, high reward" company (and thus you're not a startup by PG's definition).
not that bad of an idea imho.
a VC fund with 100mil can fund 10,000 groups of kids this way. Gives kids new opportunities socially (reduces teen delinquency), and the VC could hope to recoup if/when one of them becomes unicorn status.
Whoever is in charge of this fund is responsible for dolling out 100mm of other people's money.
How in the world does this group of investors responsibly filter and vet 10,000 suitable companies in a time effective manner? How do you effectively keep track of the founders and the money?
Are checks being written to 20 year olds without much scrutiny in the hope that a unicorn shows up without any real statistical basis for expecting such an event? I'd steer clear of that fund.
Sounds like whoever solves this will go on to be a very successful VC. Perhaps an application for AI, or a crowd-sourcing model?
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That's actually really, really good. It's super hard to adequately express ideas of "just do this (positive, constructive) thing and don't worry so much about (all the wildly unlikely things people routinely worry about instead)." But that remark does a surprisingly good job of capturing some important elements of the concept.
What's wrong when a grown man says something like that? Are phthalates to blame?
It is really important for the fat guy to determine if he is near Nile River, or an area infected with the WN virus and work out the chances of contracting the virus.
Sure a startup is "flimsy" in many ways, but doing good and adequate market research, determining what you have to offer that is better than current competition (when it exists) and considering if it's worth it is definitely something to thing about.
Worrying isn't useful, researching and planning is. If you have competition, study it and include it in your considerations and plans.
The fat guy should certainly do that, but first of all he should quit smoking and eating KFC. Those are more existential threats.