This sounds like a confusion between the specific economics definition of "competition" and the everyday colloquial definition. If you find an innovative solution to a problem that is unlike any other firm's offering, that's not "avoiding competition" in the economics sense. In fact, that's textbook competition in the economics sense. Colloquially, we might refer to this as "avoiding your competitors by staying way ahead of them" or some similar phrase.
You make a lot of sense. A lot of good sense. Yup,
you do a good job!
But, but, but, and you are not nearly alone, you are not Peter who did PayPal, now has the big bucks, dreams big
dreams, and gets famous, and maybe some revenue, by
writing books that mostly people at HN can find mostly
obvious and mostly improve on!
So, I ask you: Between smarts, hard work, and luck, you'd pick which one?
I don't know what they heck you are so upset about: What
I wrote is not facetious but genuinely complimentary to
baddox. The baddox post was good.
How good? The thinking in that post seems to me to be better than the thinking in the book under discussion.
And, moreover, much of the thinking of posts on this thread
at HN seems to me to be better than what is in the books, and I said that.
So, in comparison, the thinking in the book is not very good.
And I read a chapter of the book, have
read the corresponding VC Web site, and did
get a call from the VC firm and talked for
about an hour. Still, generally, the thinking
in this thread is better.
So, a question arises: How could the book and its
author have done so well for themselves? I offered
luck as one possible answer.
