If 2x the money wins the race, then get 2x the money. A good idea has a case that can be made for it and, at least, an expectation of the value you will create. That is what you (and others) invest against. There shouldn't be such thing as "they have more money" for an idea that you expect to generate well more than that investment. There is only "they were willing or able to get more money". This isn't trivial - believing in the projections and selling your passion and networking to find investors are all really hard.
Losing to the competition is a possible outcome, but not necessarily the "likely outcome". Anyway, the way to manage that is still to execute better. Competition helps teams that need competition to rise to the occasion, but rising to the occasion is what is needed. Without it, losing is the likely outcome whether there was competition or not.
Seems like the argument for 1st mover advantage is: first mover = funding = success rather than first mover = success. sure, I do believe that funding can lead to success -- any resource advantage leads to success. Yet, I do think first mover advantage has some more important benefits. Things like taking most of the market out of the gate (why would we need a second brown fizzy sugar water?) or defining the landscape (oh, a good carfax score is what tells you a used car is good). I think certain circumstances make first movers better and others make 2nd, 3rd or later-movers better, but an absolute is pretty hard to prove.
I would say you need customer feedback or maybe expert feedback. Some sort of feedback always helps. But, so does vision. However you get to a good product is how you need to get to a good product. You just need to know and do that. The reason feedback - specifically from actual customers - is usually chosen is because it is more on the science side than the art side, but I surely can't knock those people and teams that can deliver product excellence due to vision, luck or art.
Losing to the competition is a possible outcome, but not necessarily the "likely outcome". Anyway, the way to manage that is still to execute better. Competition helps teams that need competition to rise to the occasion, but rising to the occasion is what is needed. Without it, losing is the likely outcome whether there was competition or not.
Seems like the argument for 1st mover advantage is: first mover = funding = success rather than first mover = success. sure, I do believe that funding can lead to success -- any resource advantage leads to success. Yet, I do think first mover advantage has some more important benefits. Things like taking most of the market out of the gate (why would we need a second brown fizzy sugar water?) or defining the landscape (oh, a good carfax score is what tells you a used car is good). I think certain circumstances make first movers better and others make 2nd, 3rd or later-movers better, but an absolute is pretty hard to prove.
I would say you need customer feedback or maybe expert feedback. Some sort of feedback always helps. But, so does vision. However you get to a good product is how you need to get to a good product. You just need to know and do that. The reason feedback - specifically from actual customers - is usually chosen is because it is more on the science side than the art side, but I surely can't knock those people and teams that can deliver product excellence due to vision, luck or art.