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Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Paul Graham on why companies shouldn’t focus on competitors

December 13, 2023

“If you want to get to the truth about what makes us different, it’s this: We are genuinely customer-centric, we are genuinely long-term oriented, and we genuinely like to invent. Most companies are not those things. They are focused on the competitor, rather than the customer. They prefer to be close followers rather than inventors, because it’s safer.”

Bezos adds to this quote in the clip below:

“The number one thing that has made us successful by far is obsessive compulsive focus on the customer, as opposed to obsession over the competitor. I talk often with other CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs, and I can tell that even though they’re talking about customers, they’re really focusing on competitors. But it is a huge advantage to any company if they can stay focused on their customer instead of their competitor.”

Other leaders across Silicon Valley echo this sentiment:

"If you focus on your competition, you will never deliver anything truly innovative.” - Eric Schmidt (in his book How Google Works)

"Obviously we think about competition to some extent. But I feel my job is mostly getting people not to think about our competition. In general I think there’s a tendency for people to think about the things that exist. Our job is to think of the thing you haven’t thought of yet that you really need…. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better.” - Larry Page (source)

“At both Viaweb and YC, every minute I spent thinking about competitors was, in retrospect, a minute wasted… It's exceptionally rare for startups to be killed by competitors — so rare that you can almost discount the possibility… Inexperienced founders usually give competitors more credit than they deserve. Whether you succeed depends far more on you than on your competitors… focus on users, not competitors. The most important information about competitors is what you learn via users anyway… You should compete against what someone else could be doing, not just what you can see people doing.” - Paul Graham (source, source)