Competition is for losers

Zero sum games are games where there is only one winner and everyone else is a loser — a good example is sports. Just one team/person wins the cup, everyone else goes home sad. Business is not a zero sum game, there can be 100 people providing a particular service yet everyone makes it. But I don’t think people understand what it means to be number one in an industry.

Let the numbers do the talking

Facebook is the number 1 social network in the world. Their market cap is 634 billion dollars

Twitter is valued at 32.5 billion dollars. Facebook is 1,981% bigger than Twitter.

Tesla is valued at 1.1 trillion Dollars, the next best is Toyota valued at 297 billion Dollars. Toyota is 370% smaller than Tesla.

The android store is the number one App Store in the world with 2.5 billion users in the world, thats 1.6 billion more users than iOS.

Johnson & Johnson is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world valued at 428 billion dollars. That’s 108 billion dollars more than second placed Roche valued at 320 billion.

Inditex is the largest fashion company in the world wit a market cap of 111.7 billion dollars. They are 25 billion dollars more valuable than Nike valued at 92.8 billion dollars.

Grab a seat for this; Emirates airline is the largest by market cap valued at 91.8 billion dollars

The next best is United Airlines valued at 14.2 billion dollars. Emirates left United Airlines in the dust with 77.6 billion dollars.

Dear founder, it’s ok to seek to be number one in your industry, it’s a lofty goal. Never settle for less. As earlier stated, business is not a zero sum game, so you can build a business as the 10,000th person trying to solve that particular problem and still end up a millionaire.

But before you take home number 10,000 position on the chart, take a minute to comprehend the difference between one million and one billion. There are 1,000 one million in one billion. Let that sink. Don’t settle.

Competition is for losers ~ Peter Thiel

In 2002, Tesla, Facebook, Twitter, Zoom, Coinbase, Binance, Uber didn’t exist. The iPhone, Youtube, AWS, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Android, 4G had not been invented.

In the same way, the top 30 companies by 2030 probably do not exist today/in idea stage/just launched and are still very small.

Keep building, keep pushing. Never settle.