"Even if someone is already in your market space, ask yourself whether you can approach it from a different angle and thereby secure your own customer base"
About this Quote
Competition isn’t a stop sign here; it’s a map. Cohen’s line reads like a corrective to the most common entrepreneurial self-sabotage: treating “crowded” as synonymous with “closed.” As a journalist, he’s writing in the register of pragmatic pattern-recognition, the kind forged by watching industries recycle the same fear narratives every time a new platform, product, or publication shows up.
The intent is briskly utilitarian: don’t waste time wishing for a vacuum. Markets almost never offer one. Instead, the lever you actually control is angle - how you frame the problem, what you prioritize, who you build for, what you refuse to do. “Different angle” is doing quiet work: it implies differentiation that’s strategic rather than cosmetic, less “new logo” and more “new promise.” It’s an invitation to interrogate the incumbent’s blind spots: underserved users, clunky workflows, pricing that assumes a certain kind of customer, tone that alienates, features that cater to power users while ignoring beginners.
The subtext is that customer bases aren’t inherited from categories; they’re recruited through specificity. Cohen sidesteps the macho fantasy of “beating” competitors and points toward a more durable goal: securing your own slice by making a subset feel seen. In an era when digital distribution flattens barriers to entry but also floods attention, “angle” becomes not just positioning but survival - a way to translate similarity into a distinct identity, and noise into a recognizable signal.
The intent is briskly utilitarian: don’t waste time wishing for a vacuum. Markets almost never offer one. Instead, the lever you actually control is angle - how you frame the problem, what you prioritize, who you build for, what you refuse to do. “Different angle” is doing quiet work: it implies differentiation that’s strategic rather than cosmetic, less “new logo” and more “new promise.” It’s an invitation to interrogate the incumbent’s blind spots: underserved users, clunky workflows, pricing that assumes a certain kind of customer, tone that alienates, features that cater to power users while ignoring beginners.
The subtext is that customer bases aren’t inherited from categories; they’re recruited through specificity. Cohen sidesteps the macho fantasy of “beating” competitors and points toward a more durable goal: securing your own slice by making a subset feel seen. In an era when digital distribution flattens barriers to entry but also floods attention, “angle” becomes not just positioning but survival - a way to translate similarity into a distinct identity, and noise into a recognizable signal.
Quote Details
| Topic | Marketing |
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