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Hyper Competitive Sleep Losing Entrepreneurs?
Comments(8)
I remarked to a friend that Mark Suster’s entrepreneurial roots show in his approach to being a VC – he’s come out of nowhere and in short order aggressively pushed himself into being one of the most relevant voices out there. He seems to be working a lot harder than the others guys, exactly as you’d expect an entrepreneur to be. Not exactly what you’d expect of a VC.
His blog is fantastic, and I quite often agree with his advice.
That’s why I found it odd that his The Best Entrepreneurs Are Hyper Competitive & Hate Losing struck such a dissonant chord with me.
Shuffling through the successful business people I know and trying to gauge whether they would be the type of people who are obsessed with winning, even in a family game of scrabble, I don’t come to a clear conclusion. I know hyper competitive people, but I also know plenty of people who are able to separate their business behavior from their personal behavior. And not obsess with beating the competition.
Maybe that’s what’s not sitting well with me – Mark’s definition of winning seems to be beating the competition.
Some of the best entrepreneurs I know don’t obsess with the competition. They obsess with their own behavior.
Here’s a contrived example – look at Apple. Do you see Jobs competing with the others in the industries he enters, or do you see him trying create the best possible product, distinctly separate from what his competitors are doing?
Frankly I have a hard time picturing a lot of these guys stressing out over scrabble or Guitar Hero.
Mark’s a very successful guy and his approach has certainly worked for him, but I disagree that you need to be obsessed with winning in the way that Mark describes it.
Look at this way: you could destroy all your competitors and still not win. You could also win without destroying any of your competitors.
First, pick the right game. Then, pay attention to playing that game as best it can be played. Competing may be an important tactical part of playing the game, but it’s probably not the part to obsess over.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. From the accounts I hear Steve Jobs is about the most competitive guy out there. This was evidenced in this week’s remark calling Google’s “Do No Evil” slogan “Bullshit.” He knows Google is his next big competitor. In the past he’s had drag down fights with Gates but Microsoft is no longer as relevant to him. He’s known for totally screwing people who leak information about product releases. He’s ordered books not to be sold in the Apple Store that talk badly about him.
Jobs is one of the top 5 execs of our generation. And he’s one competitive mo fo.
Steve is an incredibly competitive person in the right game: creating amazing products and marketing them like no one else. I don’t know him personally so I have no idea what his poker or scrabble habits are, but I’m guessing he’s not spending the bulk of his time “competing” – with Google or anyone else. At the talk he gave at Yahoo he stressed how much of his personal time is devoted to paying attention to the details of the product and obsessing over making it amazing.
My contention is not with the assertion that entrepreneurs must be fierce competitors, but with the implication that actively “competing” – flying down to a VC meeting to upstage a competitor – is a core part of what it takes win.
There’s an important distinction to be made between wanting to win / beat the competition and being so focused on competitors that you end up doing exactly what they’re doing or trying to match all of their features and marketing initiatives. That’s often a losing game. People like Jobs want to win, but they do it by coming out with differentiated products, not by spending all their time worrying about minor moves their competitors are making. So I think Mark’s point is that you need incredible will to beat competitors, not that you should necessarily spend all your time trying to check the same boxes they’re checking. You should still often zig when they zag because that’s the way to win.
Mark,
Steve Jobs is an eccentric, but most successful businessman, in my opinion. I am not sure if everyone should emulate his practices. I do consider him as a role model for entrepreneurs in certain aspects – quality, design, etc. Probably Parand’s example here is not apt. However, I agree with him that we all don’t need to be competition killers. Obviously we need to be aware of the competition, plan to be ahead of them and leap forward. Also, entrepreneurs have to work hard, often lengthy days and nights even to stay and succeed in business.
Large organizations such as banks and telecom companies also have this mentality that only one can survive in the industry. It is neither good for the companies nor good for the consumers. Hence multiple companies can survive in an industry, though the number differs from industry to industry.
I initially didn’t agree with Mark either since the implication is almost that only childish jerks can be great entrepreneurs, but when I think about it, I started to realize my entire life is built around competition. When I’m not working on my startup, I’m playing competitive sports like soccer, basketball, tennis and squash. Even when I’m taking a break from coding, I play chess with others online and expect to win even against the best.
And certainly many other people aren’t like that. I look at this issue as a part of the social tension between co-operation and competition. Most people want to be accepted by society, instead of try to dominate it and risk falling on your face. ‘Herd mentality’ isn’t just for VCs and high school dating!
As for Stevie Jobs, the question is – did he create the iPhone to achieve some sort of spiritually pure product, or try to develop something that blew all of the other guys out of the water? I really think it was the latter. The reason he enters highly competitive industries already is probably because his massive ego (and yes competitiveness) leads him to believe he can do better.
I don’t think Steve Jobs is hyper-competitive. I don’t believe he gives a damn about the competitors. What defines him is the restless, maniacal pursue of excellence. He wants to come with the perfect, ultimate product. Being competitive comes naturally after after you achieve it.
You’re absolutely right. Focusing on competitors can be a problem. Plus, they’re likely to be doing the wrong thing.
But, I didn’t get the feeling from Mark’s article that he said you had to beat your competitors at “their game.” His message was more about having a strong “will to win.”
Will to win is more than competitiveness. It’s about Ego, and ego is a good thing (so long as it’s tempered with humility). If you have a strong ego, which you should, you’ll be confident, and you’ll work to out perform anyone you consider a competitor. You should be the winner and the outcome is within your control. (at least you should think so)
In my opinion Mark is right, but I think the concept of “competition” is somehow broader, successful entrepreneurs are always competing with somebody/something, but many times is not as obvious as the company in direct competition.
Example: A very successful entrepreneur, that I knew very well, was motivated by: “showing his former boss that he can build a better company”, and his goal was to reach an IPO at higher valuation than his previous boss company. During the life of the company he rejected acquisition offers only based on that, until he got what he wanted: an IPO at 4 times the valuation of his previous boss (the funny thing was that his former boss, the one who he was “competing” with, was an important investor in the company, so he “lost” in the competition, but laughed all the way to the bank