I like to generate fresh, innovative ways to play defense by asking my team, “If we were trying to compete with ourselves, what we would do? What if … - Reid Hoffman

As we’ve already seen, most great ideas look dumb at first. Being contrarian doesn’t mean that dumb people disagree with you; it means that smart people disagree with you!

in one of the most influential business books of all time, Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm. Moore argues that technology companies often run into problems when they try to transition from a market of early adopters to the mainstream — the proverbial “chasm.” He recommends that companies focus on niche beachhead markets, from which the company can expand outward using a “bowling pin” strategy in which these markets help to open up adjacent markets. This strategy is even more important for network effects businesses.

Yet despite these offensive reasons to scale, the most common driver of blitzscaling is the threat of competition. Even without competition, you would still want to achieve first-scaler advantage and climb the learning curve, but you might prefer the less risky fastscaling approach to growth. Ask yourself, “Can somebody else realize this opportunity before me?” If the answer is yes, moving faster probably reduces the risk of competition more than it raises the risk of failure. The more intense the competition, the faster you should try to move.