This happened to us at Posterous. We thought we were trying to beat Tumblr. Tumblr didn’t even want to be Tumblr. In the end there was no actual enduring value in that. What we really needed to do was be Instagram but it was too late. Too busy beefing with the littles to win.
Jeff Morris Jr.
Jeff Morris Jr.Nov 9, 2025
Startup beef is always funny. Years ago, I worked at a marketplace & we decided Craigslist was our enemy. We built narratives around “beating” them, studied their every move, and even shaped internal goals around taking their users. I’m pretty sure they never thought about us once. Later, we shifted our obsession to TaskRabbit. Remember Taskrabbit? We spent so much energy trying to outdo them w/ pricing wars, feature debates, endless comparisons. But in the end, neither of us became a breakout, venture-scale success. The real competitors were the ones playing a much bigger game: DoorDash, Instacart, Uber. We knew those founders personally, hung out with them at the same SF parties, but never saw them as direct competition. Turns out, they were just playing a different sport entirely. I see the same thing today in AI and crypto. Startups beefing over tiny overlaps, chasing small wins. Before you pick a fight, make sure you’re actually in a market worth winning. Otherwise, you’ll wake up every morning obsessed with a game that doesn’t matter.
Maybe the zoom out is even more sobering: actually instead of trying to be Tumblr or Instagram, we needed to be the best possible Posterous
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