Ignore Your Competition
It takes a lot to start a company. A lot of knowledge, a lot of time, a lot of effort. Just… a lot. With as many balls as you have to juggle as a founder, it can feel like letting one thing slip past will bring everything crashing down around you. So, it may strike you as odd when you hear what Dave Vasen, the founder of Brightwheel, has to say about your competition: ignore it.
How can you just ignore competition? The very people who are, in essence, trying to put you out of business? Well, it’s exactly that kind of mindset you should be aiming to avoid.
When it comes to how close of an eye he keeps on other in the space, Dave says he stays aware, but ultimately he says, “just don’t pay attention. You could end up spending a lot of time worrying about what the competition is doing, or how they’re performing, or what’s happening, versus just getting yourself best positioned to execute and look ahead where people aren’t looking.”
That’s at the core of it, really. There’s always going to be someone. Some competition trying to copy what you’re doing. But it’s been said a million times: ideas are a dime a dozen. Your competition doesn’t have your plan or your vision for your company, and that’s what should be the driving force behind the decisions you’re making: not just trying to keep up with the Joneses.
“The vision, the software, the brand, the team that we have… all of those components are ultimately what make up Brightwheel. It’s not just the idea that you’re putting early education software in the cloud.” Dave explains.
For Dave and his team, getting where they are now with Brightwheel has been an ongoing process; always tinkering, improving, and updating. But it’s always been in response to their customers and how they felt was the best way to tackle that particular problem, not based on what outside services were offering.
To hear Dave talk about that early process of building the initial version of Brightwheel and how his role has changed along the way, check out his episode on Mark Cuban’s Founder Focused.
