Lessons Learned From a 3-Time Category Creator

Competing head-to-head in business can be an expensive, cutthroat, and often frustrating effort yielding diminishing returns. Throughout my 25-year experience in Enterprise and SaaS software startups, I have observed countless companies try to pull ahead by “out-innovating”, adding new functionality, or offering cheaper solutions. When this happens, companies tend to converge along the same competitive dimensions and become overly focused on beating one another, and lose sight of the customer. This is a losing battle for vendors, investors, and pretty much everyone involved.