Being First

Does being first matter?

Let's look at AI.

ChatGPT burst onto the scene in November 22. Soon after, Anthropic's Claude dropped, then Gemini and finally Grok.

If you take Google Trends, you'd be hard pushed to say the OpenAI app won the day cause it was first.

But that's not the whole picture. ChatGPT has/is winning because:

- Branding: it's a greart, easy to remember name
- UX/UI: they nailed the product design
- Technology: their llm's have been the best
- GTM: while Google and X struggled to bundle Gemini and Grok respectively into existing products, ChatGPT has been stand-alone

And there's several other reasons, not least the power of Sam Altman's personality, fundraising and ofcourse all that boardroom drama.

But anyway, being first matters. But isn't the be all and end all.

Focus on getting together great product, branding, technology and storytelling and you can still win.