Thread by @anshul81

A few thoughts on "First Mover vs. Second Mover advantage"

A familiar saying recommends —

The early bird may get the worm but it's the second mouse who gets the cheese.

Warren Buffett invited Bill Gates for a game of dice and offered him to roll first.

Studying the numbers on the dice, Gates said, “This is a non-transitive dice. You choose first.”

Non-transitive dice confer advantage to the 2nd mover.

fundooprofessor.wordpress.com/2005/11/06/bil…

Unlike non-transitive dice, there are games where first movers have the edge.

Tick-tac-toe is one such game.

If you get the first turn, and you put your mark on the center square in the grid, you have an unfair edge in the game.

But those are games.

How about the real world?

In 70s, Robert Taylor's tiny company was first to introduce liquid soaps.

Colgate Palmolive, a FMCG giant, could have easily crushed Taylor by introducing their own liquid soap.

It could not.

Getting the first turn, Taylor had already put his mark in the center square.

How?

Liquid soaps require plastic pump dispensers. There were only 2 suppliers for these pumps.

Taylor purchased the entire supply of pumps that those two suppliers could produce for next 2 years.

Colgate Palmolive was stunned.

You could call Taylor's move a shrewd manoeuvre.

But I see that as an instance of someone taking the advantage of being the first mover.

Colgate Palmolive was forced to buy Taylor's company.

As for being second mouse, Google wasn’t the first search engine.

Neither was Facebook the first social network.

Amazon wasn’t the first e-commerce company either.

And Apple certainly wasn’t the first company to create personal computers. It was IBM.

Uber vs. Lyft is almost a textbook case study of second mouse stealing the cheese.

Being first, Uber had to muscle its way through industry regulations.

Lyft didn’t have to shell out a single dime to deal with regulatory hurdles. Uber did it for Lyft.

Pioneers usually die of bug bites and dysentery, writes Bill Green.

There is no shame in being a second-mover.

inc.com/bill-green/wan…

Devil and his friend were pursuing a man who was walking down a street.

Suddenly they saw God approaching the man ahead of them.

“What’s God going to tell that man?” worried the Devil's friend.

“God is enlightening him with the supreme truth,” said the Devil.

“That is very bad business for you, then,” said his friend.

“Oh, not at all,” the Devil replied, “I am going to let him organize the truth into a religion.”

Devil clearly preferred being the second mover.