Whether or not you’re profitable has very little to do with how valuable others think you are. And usually having competitors is something that validates your market.

The same can be said about food delivery start ups.

> And usually having competitors is something that validates your market.

Don't users validate your market? ChatGPT has plenty of users, so I would think competitors only hurt their value.

Well, it depends.

Clearly, you can be a company like Microsoft where nobody is challenging your dominance in PC operating systems, and you can make huge sums of money. So competitors certainly aren't vital.

Or if you've cleverly sewn up a market with patents or trade secrets or a giant first-mover advantage or network effects, and nobody's got any chance of challenging your dominance in your specific market niche - again that could be highly profitable.

On the other hand, if you're selling ten-dollar bills for five dollars, you might have millions of satisfied paying customers, but no competitors because nobody else thinks your unit economics make sense. Or if you run a DVD rental store, you might be profitable and have many return customers, but you might not attract competitors because they don't think DVD rental is a growth business.

So some people consider a lack of competition an ominous sign.

> And usually having competitors is something that validates your market

a whole bunch of AI startups were founded around the same time. surely each can't validate the market for the others and be validated by the others in turn

The surviving ones can. The same way that multiple species of trees, growing on the same patch of the ground, desperately competing for sunlight, together validate that the soil underneath is fertile.

Even if they are unprofitable they can get VC money very easily.

Plus they make 20 dollars a month from a lot of people.