The hottest Competition Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Embracing yourself 🤗

Tranquil Thoughts • 19 implied HN points • 22 Feb 23
📖 Philosophy Authenticity Self-reflection Competition Identity Conformity Values
  1. Being true to yourself is key to escaping the pressure of competition. When you embrace who you are, you stand out in a way that no one else can.
  2. Conformity can help build community, but it can also lead to exclusion and pressure. It's important to reflect on your values and desires rather than just fitting in with others.
  3. You don't have to avoid competition or fitting in completely. Just make sure you stay true to your own values and priorities when making choices.

Competing against incumbents: Flank them

Brick by Brick • 18 implied HN points • 06 Sep 23
💼 Business Competition Strategy Marketing Entrepreneurship Innovation
  1. Having competitors in the market can actually benefit your business by establishing a need for your product and setting a budget.
  2. Providing a better customer experience and transparent pricing are common tactics, but they may not be effective strategies against incumbents.
  3. To compete successfully against larger competitors, consider flanking them by offering unique attributes and advantages that they cannot provide.

The Last Challenger

Net Interest • 7 implied HN points • 15 Mar 24
💼 Business Finance Competition Banking Mergers Market
  1. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the UK government allowed a significant bank merger to ensure financial stability despite concerns about competition.
  2. The idea of promoting competition through challenger banks was embraced but has struggled to reduce the dominance of the Big Four banks in the UK.
  3. Despite efforts to increase competition, mergers between existing players, like Virgin Money and Nationwide, have become a significant strategy to challenge the Big Four banks.

Why OpenAI most likely paid Apple and will be the clear winner in the new Apple Intelligence play

Power Platform News • 1 HN point • 11 Jun 24
🕹 Technology AI Partnerships Data Competition Innovation
  1. OpenAI likely paid Apple for the privilege of being integrated into Apple's software, as it benefits both companies.
  2. Through the partnership, OpenAI can significantly increase its user base of ChatGPT and gain valuable data for training its models.
  3. This collaboration could position OpenAI as a major competitor to Google by offering a ChatGPT version that generates more meaningful data.
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What to make of BYD's huge discounts

TP’s Substack • 5 implied HN points • 02 Mar 24
💼 Business Automotive Market Trends Competition EVs Industry Analysis
  1. BYD has drastically lowered prices on its 2024 models, resetting the market expectations for NEVs in China's EV market.
  2. BYD's vertical integration and control over the battery supply chain allow it to keep costs lower than competitors and maintain a strong market position.
  3. Lower costs of batteries and chips have enabled BYD to implement these price cuts and make NEVs more affordable compared to ICE vehicles in China.

3/31/22 Digest New Format! The Death of Community Group Buying

Tech Buzz China Insider • 19 implied HN points • 01 Apr 22
💼 Business E-commerce Investment Market Analysis Tech industry Competition
  1. Community group buying is facing challenges and changes, with notable shifts in established platforms like Meituan, Pinduoduo, and Alibaba.
  2. Rural e-commerce seems more promising than urban e-commerce in the community group buying sector, showcasing higher buying frequencies.
  3. The cold chain issues, lack of profitable unit economics, and the decline in investment indicate the struggles within the community group buying market, with Pinduoduo positioned as a potential winner.

Twitter Blue Thread: Newsletter Edition

Mosquito Chronicles • 4 HN points • 25 Apr 23
🕹 Technology Social media Product Development User Experience Regulation Competition
  1. Making large changes to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook requires caution due to the complexity of the systems and the potential unintended consequences.
  2. Even small technical changes can have big impacts on user experience and site performance.
  3. User retention and engagement on social media platforms can be heavily influenced by subtle design elements and cultural dynamics.

Should Wendy's Introduce Surge Pricing?

Economic Forces • 4 implied HN points • 29 Feb 24
💼 Business Economics Pricing Competition Consumer behavior Marketing
  1. Dynamic pricing and price discrimination are complex but can benefit both firms and consumers by adjusting prices based on demand and consumer willingness to pay.
  2. Price discrimination, when done thoughtfully, can lower prices for some consumers while increasing profits for firms, ultimately benefiting both parties.
  3. Despite advancements in digital tools for dynamic pricing, many companies, including Wendy's, are cautious due to the importance of maintaining customer trust and long-term relationships.

Big Tech & Open Source: Where Is the Love? (2020)

Deep-Tech Newsletter • 39 implied HN points • 24 Jun 20
🕹 Technology Big Tech Open Source Sentiment Analysis Developers Competition
  1. Big Tech heavily contributes to open source projects on GitHub, even though they can influence the project's direction.
  2. Amazon has faced criticism for potentially hindering open source startups by offering competing services on AWS.
  3. Google leads in positive sentiment towards open source, followed closely by Microsoft, while Amazon received a lower score due to recent backlash.

Marshall's Second Law of Demand

Economic Forces • 5 implied HN points • 09 Nov 23
💼 Business Economics Trade Competition Productivity
  1. Economists have many 'laws' but they aren't real laws, like Marshall's Second Law of Demand.
  2. Marshall's Second Law of Demand explains that demand elasticity changes with price and quantity consumed.
  3. Marshall's Second Law is relevant in trade theory, showing how higher productivity leads to higher markups and how competition reallocates production towards more efficient firms.

Can OpenAI Keep Their Lead in Generative AI?

AI Progress Newsletter • 7 implied HN points • 23 Apr 23
🕹 Technology AI Generative AI Machine Learning Competition Innovation
  1. The competition in generative AI is growing as more companies work with large language models.
  2. OpenAI may face challenges in maintaining their lead due to limitations in text data for training larger models.
  3. The future for OpenAI could involve either successfully incorporating videos into models to stay ahead, or facing challenges if they fail to scale up efficiently.

What happened to markups and dynamism?

Economic Forces • 2 implied HN points • 14 Mar 24
💼 Business Economics Market Power Competition Industry Analysis
  1. Rising market power and falling business dynamism are being discussed as potential signs of competition decline.
  2. Industry-level evidence does not clearly show a causal relationship between rising markups and falling dynamism. Some industries with higher markups saw less decline in dynamism.
  3. Theoretical perspectives on market barriers to entry and free entry show the complexity of the relationship between markups, competition, and dynamism in economics.

OLO's Dilemma... (part 1)

Guasty Winds Investment Ideas • 2 HN points • 23 Mar 23
💼 Business Finance Technology Competition Market Trends Industry Analysis
  1. OLO experienced rapid growth during the pandemic but is now facing challenges with slowing growth and increasing competition.
  2. The industry tech stack is evolving, and OLO's role as a platform is being questioned as competition intensifies.
  3. OLO's foray into payments may face challenges in adoption and profitability, impacting its future growth potential.

VOL 68: Threads Surpass Expectations: Reaching 100 Million Users in Just Five Days

MAP's Tech Newsletter. • 4 implied HN points • 10 Jul 23
🕹 Technology Social media Competition Data Privacy Tech industry Innovation
  1. Threads gained 100 million users in just five days, a remarkable achievement in the tech industry.
  2. Threads is considered a potential 'Twitter killer', creating competition in social media.
  3. Meta's Threads app offers unique features like longer posts and sharing limits, differentiating it from Twitter.

Why You Should Join The Browser Company

Why You Should Join • 5 implied HN points • 14 Aug 23
🕹 Technology Browsers Startups Monetization Competition Team
  1. Browsers have become the new dominant application environment, surpassing operating systems in managing software and workflows.
  2. Arc by The Browser Company aims to bring organizational tools, customizations, and efficiency to web browsing for power users.
  3. The Browser Company has a strong team, a unique vision, and faces the challenge of monetizing a widely-used free product.

Differentiation Treadmill of Startups

User-Friendly • 1 HN point • 06 Mar 24
💼 Business Startups Competition Innovation Market Differentiation
  1. Darwin's evolutionary theory emphasizes the importance of differentiation in the business world, just like in biological systems.
  2. In a competitive market, startups must set themselves apart through unique offerings to survive and thrive.
  3. Effective adaptive selection and differentiation can help businesses gain a competitive advantage and stay relevant in a constantly evolving market environment.

SaaS: The Lazy Industry

Alex Ghiculescu's Newsletter • 4 HN points • 07 Apr 23
💼 Business SaaS Software Development Innovation Competition Product Management
  1. SaaS companies prioritize cash flow over product improvements, leading to less investment in innovation.
  2. The high cost of software production creates strong moats for B2B companies, making it challenging for competitors to enter the market.
  3. To avoid becoming 'lazy,' companies can focus on disciplined spending, lean teams, and continuous innovation.

Why didn't we get GPT-2 in 2005?

DYNOMIGHT INTERNET NEWSLETTER • 3 HN points • 21 Mar 23
🕹 Technology AI Supercomputers Training Progress Competition
  1. GPT-2 likely required around 10^21 FLOPs to train, involving various estimates and approaches.
  2. The BlueGene/L supercomputer from 2005 could have trained GPT-2 in about 41 days, showcasing the progress in computing power.
  3. The development of large language models like GPT-2 was a gradual process influenced by evolving ideas, funding, and technology, distinct from targeted moon landing projects.

UMC: Taiwan’s Other Semiconductor Giant

The Asianometry Newsletter • 2 HN points • 10 May 23
🕹 Technology Semiconductors Manufacturing Competition Innovation Market Expansion
  1. UMC was Taiwan's first semiconductor company founded by the government to pivot the economy towards integrated circuits.
  2. UMC faced steep competition from TSMC, leading to innovative strategies like OEM foundry and joint ventures.
  3. UMC struggled to keep up with TSMC technically, especially with significant decisions like the 28nm gate technology and faced challenges in global expansions, including incidents in China.

Capture-the-Flag: môn thể thao trí tuệ của hacker

Thái | Hacker | Kỹ sư tin tặc • 39 implied HN points • 21 May 10
🕹 Technology Hacking Competition Skills Events Community
  1. Capture-the-Flag (CTF) is an intellectual sport for hackers, focusing on attacking and defending computer networks. It requires diverse skills like programming, system administration, and cryptography.
  2. CTF competitions like DEF CON CTF are intense, reflecting real-world hacking scenarios and emphasizing teamwork and high-level skills.
  3. CTF events test participants' technical abilities and require physical and mental endurance due to continuous challenges, making them a valuable learning and networking opportunity for cybersecurity enthusiasts.

ChatGPT plugins: OpenAI's attempt to kill Google

I Am Not a Robot • 1 HN point • 13 Apr 23
🕹 Technology AI Plugins Competition Innovation Marketplace
  1. ChatGPT plugins are aimed at making it more useful like Google by connecting it with external resources.
  2. With access to ChatGPT's plugin store, users can easily enhance their tasks such as shopping or gathering information.
  3. OpenAI's advantage over Google in developing ChatGPT plugins lies in offering early adopters favorable deals and incentives.

A perambulator's theory of sports

Perambulations • 0 implied HN points • 02 Mar 23
🎾 Sports Exploration Exploitation Values Fairness Competition
  1. Geeks can engage with sports through predictive models and board games that share underlying rules with sports.
  2. Exploration and exploitation in games and sports represent competing perspectives, balancing information gathering and maximizing rewards.
  3. Sports culture can promote social values and fairness, and innovating sports to be more exploratory can attract new fans and diversify competition.

Increasing Kaggle ink detection prizes to $100k, and announcing open source prizes

Vesuvius Challenge • 0 implied HN points • 24 Mar 23
🕹 Technology Open Source Competition Livestream
  1. Ink Detection Progress Prize now has $100,000 in prizes, with 10 winners awarded for finding solutions to the ink detection problem.
  2. Introduction of 'open source prizes' to encourage public contributions in software, documentation, research notes, etc., with 3 prizes of $2,000 each for the best contributions by April 11th.
  3. Judging of open source contributions will be subjective by the Technical Team, and submissions must be publicly accessible and usable by other contestants.

Dropsuite

Nihar’s Thoughts on Stocks • 0 implied HN points • 27 Mar 23
💰 Finance Investing Market Analysis Valuation Competition Risks
  1. Dropsuite is a fast-growing company offering online backup services for SMBs through MSPs.
  2. The market undervalues Dropsuite due to misconceptions about its business model and differentiation in the online backup market.
  3. Dropsuite has a clear path to profitability and potential market cap growth by 2028, but faces risks from distributor concentration and competitive market dynamics.