The importance of competition (new pod)

You need competitors. Whatever your business is, it should be easy to point to your competition. If you don't think anyone is competing with you, you probably just don't understand the value you're providing to your customers. It's possible you're blazing an entirely new trail, but it's very unlikely.

Let's use a somewhat silly example: milkshakes. When a customer orders a milkshake, the milkshake beat out its competition. But what was it competing with? You might think the answer is ice cream cones and sundaes because they're the most similar items on the menu, but it actually depends on the customer.

If the customer was choosing a drink to go with their burger and fries, then the milkshake was competing with soda and water. If the customer was choosing a portable, easy-to-consume-while-driving pick me up for their morning commute, then the milkshake was competing with breakfast sandwiches and coffee.

This concept isn't new. There's a whole framework you can use called "jobs to be done" to help your business refine its purpose. Whether you're selling milkshakes, consulting services, or just trying to build a dApp that people will want to use, it's a useful frame of reference.

Competition is extremely common among dApps because it's easy to create another token, another NFT collection, another staking protocol, etc. But this is categorizing the dApps by what type of smart contract is being employed. Instead, consider who your target users are and what jobs they need you to do. How can you differentiate your dApp from all the other similar projects in your customers' minds?

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-Luke

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P.S. Speaking of competition, Julian Gonzalez created Fogata to compete with BurnKoin, and he created Kondor Wallet which is now competing with My Koinos Wallet. I had Julian on the pod this week to talk about his projects and competition on Koinos. Enjoy!