Should I Obsess Over Customers or Competitors?

David Senra, reading Kevin Kelly's Excellent Advice for Living, says obsessing about customers will take you further than obsessing about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about customers goes farther. The useful question is which of the two options will actually take you further.

Jeff Bezos talked about the same point over and over, and his view is obvious. Customer obsession takes you farther than competitor obsession because it compounds into a moat, pushes you to invent proactively, and keeps you oriented towards durable needs instead of reactive copycat behavior.