玩愚蠢的游戏，赢愚蠢的奖品Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes
Nivi：当你以本真行事时，你并不会太在意竞争。竞争确实会惹恼你，激起一些恐惧、嫉妒和其他情绪。但你并不会真正介意，因为你始终盯着目标和使命。最坏的情况下，你或许还能从对手那里得到一些启发。而且，常常有一些方式可以与竞争对手展开良性合作，最终为你扩大整个市场的规模。
Naval：这取决于生意的性质。硅谷科技行业最顶尖的生意往往是赢家通吃。当你看到竞争时，你可能会暴跳如雷，因为它确实会危及你辛辛苦苦建立起来的一切。
如果我开一家餐厅，而另一个城镇开了一家更有意思的同类型餐厅，那简直是太好了。我会复制那些行之有效的做法，放弃那些行不通的。所以说，这取决于生意的性质。
通常，看起来在直接竞争的生意其实并非如此。它们最终会变得彼此相邻，或略有不同。你离一个完全不同的生意只有一步之遥，有时你需要迈出那一步。如果你正忙于争夺一个"安慰奖"，你就不会迈出那一步。
你在玩一场愚蠢的游戏，就会赢得一个愚蠢的奖。现在你还不明白这一点，因为竞争蒙蔽了你的双眼。但三年之后，一切都会一目了然。
我的第一家公司陷入了错误的游戏
我最早创业的公司之一是 Epinions，一个独立于 Amazon 的在线产品评论网站。这个领域最终演变成了 TripAdvisor 和 Yelp，那才是我们应该走的方向。
我们本该做更多本地评论。对稀缺事物的评论，比如本地餐厅，比那些在 Amazon 上已有 1000 条评论的商品（比如相机）的评论更有价值。
在我们做到那一步之前，我们陷入了比价购物的游戏。我们与 DealTime 合并，与一批比价引擎竞争——mySimon、PriceGrabber、NexTag 和后来成为 Shopzilla 的 Bizrate。我们彼此陷入了激烈的竞争。
整个领域最后归零，因为 Amazon 在电商领域大获全胜。比价变得毫无必要，大家直接去 Amazon 买东西。
我们拿到了那个"安慰奖"，因为我们陷入了一群同行的竞争。我们本应关注消费者真正想要的东西，忠于自己的本真——那就是评论，而不是比价。我们本应深入那些客户掌握信息更少、更渴望看到评论的小众品类。
如果我们始终忠于自己的本真，我们本可以做得更好。
Nivi: When you’re being authentic, you don’t mind competition that much. It pisses you off and inspires some fear, jealousy and other emotions. But you don’t really mind because you’re oriented towards the goal and the mission. Worst-case, you might get some ideas from them. And often there are ways to work with the competition in a positive way that ends up increasing the size of the market for you.
Naval: It depends on the nature of the business. The best Silicon Valley tech industry businesses tend to be winner-take-all. When you see competition, it can make you fly into a rage. Because it really does endanger everything you’ve built.
If I’m opening a restaurant and a more interesting version of the same restaurant opens in a different town, that’s fantastic. I’m going to copy what’s working and drop what’s not working. So it depends on the nature of the business.
Often, businesses that seem to be in direct competition really aren’t. They end up adjacent or slightly different. You’re one step away from a completely different business, and sometimes you need to take that step. You’re not going to take it if you’re busy fighting over a booby prize.
You’re playing a stupid game. You’re going to win a stupid prize. It’s not obvious right now because you’re blinded by competition. But three years from now, it’ll be obvious.
My first company got caught in the wrong game
One of my first startups was Epinions, an online product review site that was independent of Amazon. That space eventually turned into TripAdvisor and Yelp, which is where we should have gone.
We should have done more local reviews. A review of a scarce item like a local restaurant is more valuable than one of an item like a camera that has 1,000 reviews on Amazon.
Before we could get there, we got caught up in the comparison-shopping game. We merged with DealTime and competed with a bunch of price-comparison engines—mySimon, PriceGrabber, NexTag and Bizrate, which became Shopzilla. We were caught in fierce competition with each other.
That whole space went to zero because Amazon won e-tail completely. There was no need for price comparison. Everyone just went to Amazon.
We got the booby prize because we were caught up in competition with a bunch of our peers. We should have been looking at what the consumer really wanted and being authentic to ourselves, which was reviews, not price comparison. We should have gone further into esoteric items where customers had less data and wanted reviews more badly.
If we stayed authentic to ourselves, we would have done better.