A startup I was working with in 2009 was developing a mobile solution for the healthcare space. Our initial target was iPhone (yes, extremely early and that’s a post for another day).
We met with some mid-level executives at RIM (Waterloo is cool, BTW). They obviously had the intention of us leading with RIM devices.
That said, when we would talk about the iPhone they had overwhelming confidence and a superiority complex I haven’t encountered since. They were calling the iPhone a toy and going so far as to heap a palatable amount of disrespect on us for even considering it. Like we were complete idiots for not seeing the obvious future where BlackBerry continued to be reigning champ in the market and the iPhone would never grow up.
They got comfortable and just didn’t take the iPhone seriously, story as old as time.