What if we found ourselves building something that nobody wanted? In that case what did it matter if we did it on time and on budget?

New Customers come from the action of past customers

Except in very narrow cases, where there's breakthrough science that needs patent production, worrying about competitors is a waste of time. If you can't out iterate someone who is trying to copy you, you're toast anyway.

There was a study done in the early 20th century of all the entrepreneurs who entered the automobile industry around the same time as Henry Ford; there were something like 500 automotive companies that got funded, had the internal combustion engine, had the technology, and had the vision. Sixty percent of them folded within a couple of years.

The big question of our time is not Can it be built? but Should it be built? This places us in an unusual historical moment: our future prosperity depends on the quality of our collective imaginations.

By the time that product is ready to be distributed widely, it will already have established customers.

We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.