Steffan Antonas http://blog.steffanantonas.com Sun, 13 May 2012 21:09:02 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/SteffanAntonashttp://feedburner.google.com First Fast Follower And The Myth of First Mover Advantage http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SteffanAntonas/~3/w7Bl1WFQbyw/first-fast-follower-and-the-myth-of-the-first-mover-advantage.htm http://blog.steffanantonas.com/first-fast-follower-and-the-myth-of-the-first-mover-advantage.htm#comments Sun, 13 May 2012 21:05:42 +0000 Steffan Antonas http://blog.steffanantonas.com/?p=2610 This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

First Fast Follower And The Myth of First Mover Advantage

]]> I watched a short Stanford entrepreneurship lecture on Udemy.com today given by Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur. In the second section, Steve comments briefly about ‘first mover advantage’ and why the difficulties of being the first mover can hinder, rather than hurt your startup. This is for reasons like having to spend a lot of time and effort creating the market and educating users, and learning hard lessons when testing assumptions that no one has ever tried before that don’t end up working (which slows you down). Instead, Steve suggests that being the first mover might not be as good as being the first best executer:

It doesn’t mean you never want to be the first mover, but the historic Stanford ‘first mover advantage’, I think, over the last decade or two, has found out to be a divide by zero problem; It’s just wrong. You don’t always want to be the first mover. In fact,  you typically want to be the first fast follower. And if we take a look at all the companies that presented here this semester, you’ll find out that they were all incredibly great fast followers. Was Amazon the first mover? How about eBay? How about Google? Were they the first movers? No. None of these guys were first movers. They were first best executers, but they certainly were not first movers. – Steve Blank

I’ve heard seasoned entrepreneurs offer the advice that, as a founder, you should assume that, at any given moment, there are 2 or 3 teams out there working on something close to, or exactly what you’re working on and that execution is the real differentiator that determines success in the end, which is why execution matters so much. For a variety of reasons, I find Steve’s words very comforting.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

First Fast Follower And The Myth of First Mover Advantage


]]> http://blog.steffanantonas.com/first-fast-follower-and-the-myth-of-the-first-mover-advantage.htm/feed 2 http://blog.steffanantonas.com/first-fast-follower-and-the-myth-of-the-first-mover-advantage.htm How Might We: Create A Community That People Asirpire To Be A Part Of? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SteffanAntonas/~3/Z-FKbSwL8iQ/how-might-we-create-a-community-that-people-asirpire-to-be-a-part-of.htm http://blog.steffanantonas.com/how-might-we-create-a-community-that-people-asirpire-to-be-a-part-of.htm#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 19:05:34 +0000 Steffan Antonas http://blog.steffanantonas.com/?p=2602 This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

How Might We: Create A Community That People Asirpire To Be A Part Of?

]]> This morning I put together this little mind map on my iPad using Adobe Ideas. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what a learning platform specifically tailored for creatives might look like, and how we might (HWM) create an online community for that platform that people would aspire to be part of. Given that the core of great branding is the expression of the right values, I started brainstorming there, asking myself “what types of values and traits might provide a good foundation for growing such a community?”. That exercise produced this. It’s incomplete, but I thought it was worth sharing.

If you had a place where you learned online with others, what type of community would you be proud to be a part of?

Mind map by Steffan Antonas

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

How Might We: Create A Community That People Asirpire To Be A Part Of?


]]> http://blog.steffanantonas.com/how-might-we-create-a-community-that-people-asirpire-to-be-a-part-of.htm/feed 0 http://blog.steffanantonas.com/how-might-we-create-a-community-that-people-asirpire-to-be-a-part-of.htm