Essay · About a 6 minute read

Why a lack of competition may be the worst thing for new startups

Escalon Services · Escalon Free Beginner

An empty competitor field feels like a moat, but this piece is honest that it often means the market has not proven it will pay yet. It pushes you past the comforting story (we have no competitors) toward the harder work of confirming that real demand exists. Treat it as a gut check before you fall in love with an empty category, not the final verdict on your specific idea.

  • No visible competitors can signal no market, so read the emptiness as a question to answer, not a win to celebrate.
  • Existing rivals are proof that people will pay for a solution to the problem; their absence removes that proof.
  • The honest move is to validate demand directly (will people switch from what they do today) before you build.
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The question it answers

  1. How do I do competitive research for a brand-new category where there are no direct competitors yet?

Read with it

  1. Video · ~5 min Clay Christensen: The Jobs to be Done Theory (the milkshake example) Clayton Christensen (HubSpot Marketing)
  2. When you are defining a category instead of entering one, the usual competitor grid does not exist yet, so this book reframes... Goodreads Book · 272 pages Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, Kevin Maney
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