The Perils of Running Fast While Looking Sideways

Last week I was invited to speak to the full product team at Oura during their San Francisco on-site. Towards the end of my talk, someone asked what I thought about competition — how much should the team focus on what competitors are doing? It’s a fitting question for times. The consumer health market could not be more competitive; and yet, just days later, Oura announced the close of their ~$900 million Series E fundraise at an $11 billion valuation. For a company that started as a Finnish sleep-tracking kickstarter project, it’s an extraordinary milestone, the kind of success that naturally invites comparison: who’s ahead, who’s behind, who’s coming next. When the question came up, the first thing that came to my mind wasn’t Apple, or Garmin, or any other worthy competitor in our space; it was my five-year-old son, James. James loves to race. At the playground, at home, anywhere he can run against someone, he will. But I’ve noticed something: when he runs, he constantly looks behind

Last week I was invited to speak to the full product team at Oura during their San Francisco on-site. Towards the end of my talk, someone asked what I thought about competition — how much should the team focus on what competitors are doing? It’s a fitting question for times. The consumer health market could not be more competitive; and yet, just days later, Oura announced the close of their ~$900 million Series E fundraise at an $11 billion valuation. For a company that started as a Finnish sleep-tracking kickstarter project, it’s an extraordinary milestone, the kind of success that naturally