MyPunchblog

A few weeks ago, I was at an epic Red Sox game. If you follow baseball, perhaps you heard about it. In the bottom of first inning, the Red Sox scored 10 runs. Yes, 10 runs. David Ortiz (aka “Big Papi”) was up twice in the inning, and he hit two 3 run home runs — in the same inning! Absolutely incredible.

I’ve seen a lot of baseball games in my lifetime. So when I turned to my sister-in-law in the bottom of the third (with the score now 12-2) and proclaimed that the Red Sox would likely hold on and win the game, I don’t think it was unreasonable for me to jump to that conclusion. Boy was I wrong.

Apparently the Texas Rangers didn’t get that memo. In the top of the 5th inning, the Rangers put on a hitting display and scored 8 runs. The very next inning, they scored 5 more — to make the score 15-14 and take the lead. Stunning.

So how did it all end? The Red Sox battled back with 4 runs in the bottom of the 8th to reclaim the lead, and hung on (barely) to win the game 19-17. That’s 36 runs on 37 hits. It tied an American League record for most runs scored in one game. Take a look at the final box score to get a sense of the unbelieveable comeback by the Rangers — 13 runs in 2 innings!

Most reasonable people would have drawn the same conclusion as I did in the 3rd inning. The Red Sox had already pulled off an amazing feat — 10 runs in one inning — no one could possibly match them, right?

The same can be said about many web businesses. The pundits of the web have declared over and over again that certain websites have such a large lead on their competition that they will never be beat. I remember distinctly meeting some of the original employees of Google back in 1999 (I was living in Palo Alto at the time where Google was founded). My reaction was typical. “Why do we need another search engine?” I asked the guy with the Google t-shirt. With Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, AOL ahead of them, there is simply no way that Google could catch up… right?

In Google’s case, not only did they catch up, but they took the lead. However, the real moral of my story is this: although the Red Sox won the game, Texas scored a hell of a lot of runs. They played a great game, and were successful in their own right. Startups (and business in general) are the same. You don’t have to win the overall game to win. If you can follow the leader (and keep pace), you’ll build a very successful business and score a lot of “runs.” I’m sure that the Rangers wanted to win the game, but I’d bet that they were very pleased with the game that they played.  

If you have a startup, don’t listen to all of the %@#^* pundits who proclaim that the competition has such a huge lead that it’s not worth playing the game. Remember, the game is 9 innings long. Focus on what you need to do to be successful, and stop looking at the scoreboard. Who knows? You may find yourself successful in your own right — and maybe you’ll even take the lead.

What other examples on the web come to mind? Facebook and MySpace? Flickr and Kodak Easyshare? Who else? Add your thoughts to the comments.

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This entry was posted on August 25, 2008 at 6:57 am and is filed under Startup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.