The story floated around amongst many entrepreneurs goes that the best way for your product to get ahead is to get it out of the gate first. While intuitively this seems obvious, being first to market (especially when you’re blazing a new trail) isn’t always all its cracked up to be. Being a first mover comes with a ton of advantages:

1. Consumers see you as innovative.
2. You get the initial surge of hype over your concept.
3. You aren’t fighting with anyone for eyeballs.

Unfortunately, getting out there first means that you have to deal with a complete lack of hindsight. You don’t have anyone else to show you the holes in your implementation. You don’t know what your product will look like at scale. You are blind to all of the mistakes that your first competitor will likely be able to avoid by looking at you.

So, if you happen to be slow out of the gate — embrace your new perspective. Instead of bemoaning your loses, take advantage of the information you now have at your disposal. Dissect the parts of your competitors product that you can improve upon with yours. Use them for invaluable market research.

It isn’t who does it first but who does it best that survives.

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