Once your products and services hit the mainstream, you are surely going to attract “fast followers”. Fast followers are the copycats that spring up to copy-and-paste whatever it is you are doing, they do it without any trace of originality on their own part.
Like my role mentor, Nikola Tesla said during his own days: “I am not bothered that they stole my ideas, I am bothered that they do not have any of theirs”
We cannot fight every fast follower that springs up, it is just too much wahala and as an Entrepreneur, every moment not spent building up the business is a waste. Sure, we should protect our turf but at what expense? Maybe when you grow to become a big conglomerate company with 47, 000 staff members you can set up committees to keep track and kill off the herd of copycats you would attract but is it not just a waste of fine talent?
When Ello sprung up from nowhere and it seems it was winning over Facebook, I do not know if Facebook flinched but actually, Facebook has seen the movie before when pundits claimed Facebook was dead because of a certain new social media website: Twitter. Over the years, all doubts have cleared, Facebook has proved it can re-invent itself over and over again, the days of the twitterification of Facebook are long over. It is Twitter that is in serious trouble right now.
The best way to deal with the fast followers, the copycats who copy-and-paste our ideas is by staying ahead 10 steps at a time through flawless execution (they can never execute better than you if you truly own the idea), and to never stop innovating, always generating fresh ideas.
These days, I do not fear competition. Anybody and Everybody is welcome to play in my turf or even copy-and-paste my ideas but i am always confident in my execution and besides, I have like 240 more ideas untouched that I would love to see built in my lifetime.
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Watching The World
- Aisha Tinubu, wife of Trojan Estates boss Kunle Tinubu and in-law to Oando Plc CEO Wale Tinubu, last Friday officially launched Householdmax.com, a Domestic Items Online Store
- The era of Windows 10 begins today!
