Founder Lesson
How would you like to be a startup competing with Apple? I love competing with big/slow/dumb companies, but Apple isn’t one that I’d want as a competitor.

The founder in this podcast didn’t feel that way. He founded Pebble…a watch that made crowdfunding history in 2012 when it raised $10 million and broke that record again in 2015 raising $20 million.

In this recent blog post, I wrote about the various reasons that startups can win against big companies. One of those was “a clear value proposition to their customers” from the beginning.

Along these same lines, the founder of Pebble felt confident starting a company in a space with Apple product rumors swirling for years because he predicted that Apple (as it did) would create a “general market” product that served multiple purposes...so really none at all very well. Apple is also an organization with many product lines, so it has to consider lots of areas in its decision making.

All my thoughts on competition can be found here. The summary...don’t worry at all about competition. The reason that I feel this way is based on authenticity of mission, brand & product. If you have that, no one can compete with you…even if they are the most successful company in history.

If you are particularly interested in product, here are all my blog posts tagged "product." Enjoy!

Get Right to the Lesson
I’d recommend listening to the entire thing, but to get right to the point go to minute 21:50 of this podcast/video.

Thanks to these folks for helping us all learn faster
Eric Migicovsky (@ericmigi), Founder of Pebble (@Pebble)
This Week In Startups (@TWistartups )
Jason Calacanis (@jason)
Jacqui Deegan (@jacqKD)
Jacob Beemer (@jacobbeemer)

Please let me and others know what you think about this topic
Email me privately at dave@switchyards.com or let's discuss publicly at @davempayne.