Sequoia’s Alfred Lin: “The best companies never talk about the competition”

“A lot of storytelling is about differentiation. Why are you different than anybody else? You don’t want to compete head-to-head. You want to tell the story about why your company is unique. I think sometimes we forget that. We just talk about why we’re better than the competition.”

Alfred continues:

“In fact, the best companies never talk about the competition. They just talk about the fact that they’re different than everybody else. They see that the world has a certain problem, and the company is out to solve that particular problem in a very unique way.”

Steve Jobs’s favorite example of this was Nike.

“One of the greatest jobs of marketing the universe has ever seen is Nike,” Jobs explained. “Remember, Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes. And yet when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company. In their ads, they don’t ever talk about their products. They don’t ever tell you about their air soles and why they’re better than Reebok’s air soles. What does Nike do? They honor great athletes and they honor great athletics. That’s who they are. That’s what they are about.”

Full video: South Park Commons “-1 to Alfred Lin, from building Zappos to investing at Sequoia“ (Nov 2023)