I’ll express anger and distrust of your maps products after you switched LA maps to show pre-fire Palisades in a blatant act of putting your finger on the scale of an election. How dare you ask us to adopt your lies and pay for your propaganda. Stay in your lane.
The question is whether legacy players can drive strategic growth that changes their trajectory to meet the AI-native disrupters. This is a data point.
Two minutes ago the Church of Satan read this and started their own competing initiative (satire). I’m off to work on the odds-maker model for which one gets there first.
You may have an advantage that big competitors don’t: The ability to focus on a small segment of the market. I don’t know your category, so don’t know if it’s viable for you, but competitors who have taken lots of capital have to go after the wide play. If you can find a high value segment they are under-optimizing for, and focus all your customer discovery, marketing and product effort, you can outcompete them!
I do the same thing. I find tremendous value in skills and code familiarity overlap. It provides a lot of flexibility. I can focus on growing junior folks, and I get a lot of satisfaction in finding these folks other projects, and supporting the lifestyles they value. It requires a different set of values and management style which is why it’s less common.