Copying your competitors

I’m trying out a new style of newsletter. Apologies for beginner’s awkwardness.

As usual, there was plenty of commentary after Apple’s WWD this year. This tweet stood out.

Plenty of quips today about Apple introducing features seen long ago on Android or Windows Phone.

This is Product Strategy 101. You prioritize things that differentiate, not things that make you the same. Catch-up features fill in later, when you’re low on differentiating ideas. — Ryan Singer

There’s no shame in catching up to your competitors. The long lag between Apple and it’s competitors suggests that there were lots of differentiators that Apple prioritized ahead of these catch up features. Or that Apple is simply moving too slowly and can’t keep up, though that seems far less plausible.

Ryan goes on to talk about why this might happen:

In my experience sometimes we ship low-hanging fruit because we don’t have a better idea. But other times, we ship low-hanging fruit because we have a HUGE idea that will take more time and we need to do something in the interim.

I would add a second valid reason, if you’re dominant is your market space and it is a way of cutting off a new competitor. Back in 2016 Ben Thompson wrote about this for Instagram Stories and Snapchat:

Instagram and Facebook are smart enough to know that Instagram Stories are not going to displace Snapchat’s place in its users lives. What Instagram Stories can do, though, is remove the motivation for the hundreds of millions of users on Instagram to even give Snapchat a shot.

Ben goes on to discuss how Instagram Stories felt like “two completely separate apps combined into one.” before closing on his main point.

 If you want something different, why not use a different app?

Oh right, because of your friends. They’re already on Instagram, and that fact isn’t so easily copied.

So really the takeaways are

1. Focus on your differentiators

2. Whenever possible make your differentiators hard to copy

3. Copy defensively if you’re already dominant and warding off competitors

4. Copy as filler features, it is ok if this comes much later and you get made fun of for it

5. If you’re at a start up, double down on 1 & 2 b because you’re unlikely to be able to afford to do 3 & 4.

6. Don’t run out of ideas.