Users express optimism that startups have a real shot because the difficulty of copying unproven features protects new innovations until they succeed.
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this is why startups have a shot. no one will copy your new features until it's already proven, because it's extremely hard. and if it's already proven you already built a 10B business
the big companies can have the best product people in the world and it's still hard
copying product features is similarly hard to coming up with new features
it requires understanding if and why something works, which is super time consuming
copying is only easy when something reaches a billion arr
lovable, cursor, harvey, and many many others are all allowed to become at least 10B businesses before it's worth labs the energy to copy it. maybe 300M before non-lab competitors try copy it
this is why startups have a shot. no one will copy your new features until it's already proven, because it's extremely hard. and if it's already proven you already built a 10B business
the big companies can have the best product people in the world and it's still hard
@gabriel1 shortcut had 3 months and 2 viral posts before knives were out
@gabriel1 Snapchat was already huge when it got killed by Instagram overnight. Now every app has "stories."
@gabriel1 Copying a feature is easy only after the market has already explained it for you. Before that, the hard part is taste: which workflow is real, which weird behavior is a bug users forgive, which wedge compounds. In AI apps, that learning loop is the moat for a while.