This is concentrated lesson juice from the 10 First To Market Products That lost out to Latecomers from Business Insider.
“1. Friendster took money from a number of large venture capital firms very early on. They promptly filled the board with VC all-stars who had grand visions for Friendster’s future, but little concern for the technical problems of its present. (Friendster vs Myspace/Facebook)
2. Even when you’re a market leader, keep iterating and improving your product. Don’t just make your next product better than your last one, but dream big, and make it better than anything your rivals could come up with. (Palm vs iPhone)
3. If someone bigger and stronger decides to enter your market, you may need to radically alter your strategy. Don’t pretend you can out-muscle them. Find your niche and shore it up. (Netscape vs Microsoft)
4. Always be thinking about whether there is a better way to do what you do. You can be sure someone else is. (Webcrawler vs Google)
5. If your product is popular, but could very easily be merely a feature of someone else’s, you have a problem. Find a way to stay relevant, or convince the makers of the uberproduct that the cheapest way to incorporate your technology is to buy you. (Tivo vs DVRs)
6. If you are selling a platform for content, it’s incredibly difficult to compete with someone who can sell that content to users directly. If you can’t do the same, get out of the way. (Rio vs iPod)
7. Consumers might have a different plan for your product than you do. Adjust your design to fit their needs, not your ideas about what the product should be. (Betamax vs VHS)
8. Keep innovating. Especially if you are in the technology sector, you can’t kid yourself that your product will stay appealing forever, or that serious competitors will never come along. (Atari vs Nintendo)
9. Sometimes your customers’ needs won’t sit well with you; what they want just isn’t the sort of product you wanted to make. If you can afford to fail, stick to your guns. Otherwise, get with the program. (Everquest vs World of Warcraft)”
