Your Biggest Competitor Has Your Face
When starting your own company, it is easy to find competition everywhere. Every market map has a dozen logos on it. Every investor asks who else is doing this. Every product launch from a company vaguely near your space lands in your inbox like a threat. The fear runs so deep that many startups choose to go stealth, hiding their idea for months or years, convinced that the moment the world sees it, someone bigger will take it. I used to read those announcements with a tight chest, as if someone had just taken something from me. It took me embarrassingly long to realize that almost none of it mattered, and that the whole framing of “beating the competition” was quietly making me worse at building.