Should investors proactively inform founders about newly emerging competitors?

Sam Corcos · Dec 11, 2023

Founders who don't know their competitive landscape are inexperienced rather than bad, because investors structurally have far more market exposure than any operator heads-down on one company for five years

Founders aren't getting pitched new ideas five times a day; they lack the capacity and exposure that comes from seeing a thousand pitches

28:27 Investors structural market exposure explains founders competitive blind spots not incompetence

Harry Stebbings · Feb 5, 2024

Proactively telling portfolio founders about newly emerging competitors is valuable

79:59 Proactively flagging new competitors is a valuable investor service

Terrence Rohan · Feb 5, 2024

Flagging new competitors to founders isn't valuable because founders' market awareness means you're only ahead of them by hours or days

Founders have such awareness of their market that they will see it themselves almost immediately

80:07 Flagging competitors adds no value since founders already know their market

David Tisch · Feb 5, 2024

Founders must understand their competitive landscape, but it isn't the investor's job to be first informer of a random two-person startup; what is valuable is genuinely asymmetric insight, like how much a rival raised or why a company is doing well

Being the first to forward public news adds nothing, whereas non-public knowledge from the investor's vantage point does

80:17 Only genuinely asymmetric non public insight not general competitor news is valuable