If someone "beats you to the punch" then they would have beat you anyway. If you have an idea that's so simple that it can be easily replicated from a signup / info page, it probably wouldn't last.

First mover advantage. In the time it takes for you to do market research, others may already have a leg-up in starting something which may converge to your idea before you launch. And having that initial traction may completely squelch your launch

Hah hah, yeah that really worked for Lycos and Excite being a web search engine site before Google. It also really worked for Friendster and Myspace being a social network site before Facebook. It really worked great for Qualcom having a PalmOS based smart phone and RIM with the Blackberry smartphone and Microsoft's Windows CE smart phones before Apple's iPhone and Google's Android came out?

First mover advantage, sometimes you show the Johnny-come-latelys all the mistakes they can avoid, and how they can improve upon your product by examining your weaknesses and flaws because you rushed it to market.

If you are a first mover, consider having in your business plan what you do when the 'heavy hitters' decide to copy your product and do it better. They most likely will so plan on it. Do a total quality management on your product and improve on it every chance you get before the copycats do it better.

I'm skeptical that "first mover advantage" is very important. There are many examples of products and services that were not first, but became the best and won.

Kevin O'Leary says pioneers get slaughtered and settlers get rich. First to move well on a proven idea - and keep moving on it - may have the advantage. First to act? Not so much.

There are pros and cons to being first mover or second mover and examples of successes and failures of each. I prefer second mover, as someone else has de-risked, educated the market, etc. Now it's just to improve/differentiate, and capture market share (all things that are easier said than done!).

First mover advantages are actually very rare. They're only relevant for markets with extremely strong network effects and lock-in. Even then, Facebook wasn't the first social network.

It's always a problem and a catch 22, you want to get customers, but also avoid competition, but I think the trend today is that stealth mode is not that helpful, there are so many ideas and if you believe what they say in the news, not enough developers to build them, your big enemy is a market with no customers, not a market with competitors. if you launch 3 months after someone in today's world, even if they manage to get a few thousands customers ahead, it doesn't make much difference in my opinion if you build it better, you'll catch up.

As someone said here earlier, idea is just a multiplier of execution.

You could also find a niche market that has little to no competition and develop to that. I remember when the Desktop Publishing market was new, and the Commodore Amiga had Deluxe Paint and a few third part desktop publishing apps in 1985. Then later in Adobe made Photoshop in 1989 for the Macintosh that copied the ideas of desktop publishing software on the Amiga. Not only that but Newtek had a Video Toaster and Video Editing software for the Amiga, and later on Apple copied it with iMovie and other stuff. But back in 1985 it was a small niche market, and it grew so much that it migrated to the Macintosh and became best selling products that promoted the Mac over the PC.

The Amiga was basically a launch platform that went away for many niche market software. If the companies that developed those for the Amiga had developed them for the Macintosh, they'd still dominate today.

"I remember when the Desktop Publishing market was new"

So do I. Remember Pagemaker vs. Quark Express?

I thought it was Ventura Publisher vs. Aldus Pagemaker.

Ready Set Go! vs Aldus Pagemaker

Pagemaker reincarnated/replaced as InDesign.

Anyone remember Calamus? Great DTP.