Trying for second place

If the market potential for a medium to small sized online condom site is $1 -$2 million dollars per year, then the trick is not to try and become the #1 site, which is extremely difficult, but rather to find 25 categories and repeat what you already know how to do. Because for people like me, beating the average guys is easy, it’s beating the one guy who’s better than me that’s damn near impossible. But 25 e-commerce sites, each doing $2 million per year is actually a $50 million a year business.

Via jdubblog

An excellent article on why being the first in life isn’t always important. Reading about this made me think of the shit Vonage has been going through; they’ve spent millions of dollars and years worth of promotion to introduce VOIP to the consumer. They may become the leading VOIP provider as a result, but they’re going to be the guys bearing the brunt of lawsuits and other legal issues as well as the ones financing the “telephony revolution”. How great must it feel to be a smaller player in that field?