The Idea People Love and Why It Misleads Founders
People love saying the market is big enough for everyone. It makes entrepreneurship sound peaceful, almost generous, as if opportunity distributes itself equally to anyone who shows up with effort and optimism. It’s a comforting belief, which is exactly why it’s repeated so often. But once a market begins to mature, when habits form, when capital gravitates to strength, when efficiency compounds, the illusion disappears.
There isn’t enough for everyone. There never was. There never will be. Markets reward concentration, not fairness. They reward separation, not coexistence.
The Early-Stage Illusion of Abundance
Almost every rising market begins by looking wide open. Ethiopia’s ride-hailing sector looked like that. For a moment, it seemed to represent abundance: more than thirty licensed companies, all believing they had a real shot. But markets do not honor enthusiasm. They honor execution, capital, trust, and timing.
And once the real contest began, the field narrowed, quickly and brutally. A handful of companies carried the market. The rest existed mostly on paper.
This pattern isn’t unique. It’s simply the nature of early markets: they look spacious until they aren’t.
Why Dominance Compounds and the Gap Widens
Once a company pulls ahead, its lead does not stay still. It accelerates. A leader attracts better financing, which attracts better teams, which builds better products, which earns more trust, which brings more customers, which lowers cost, which widens the gap. It becomes a self-reinforcing loop.
You can see this clearly once you start measuring economics instead of counting logos. Take Ethiopia’s food delivery market. Even without official numbers, rough observation makes something obvious: the top player likely earns three to four times more than its closest competitor. Not 20% more. Multiples more. The same dynamic shows up in courier and last-mile delivery, a long list of registered companies, but only one or two capturing real volume and real durability.
On paper, it may look like “first, second, third.” In reality, it’s often mountain, hills, and dust. This is how competitive gravity works. It tilts toward the leader and erases the fringe.
Competition Doesn’t Always Strengthen, Sometimes It Weakens
People say competition is good. That it drives innovation and keeps companies honest. And in some categories, that’s true. But in many markets, especially those shaped by technology, logistics, content, and network effects, competition can create the opposite effect.
Instead of innovation, companies shift to survival. Instead of building, they defend. Instead of long-term strategy, they react to noise.
Margins shrink. R&D gets delayed. Product quality dips. Short-term tactics replace deep thinking. The narrative might claim this benefits customers, but in reality, it weakens the entire market.
But today, this article is about founders, not customers, so we’ll stay focused on the founder’s side of the equation.
Participation Isn’t the Goal
A founder doesn’t enter a market just to exist. A founder enters to win. And winning is rarely compatible with the belief that the market will “make room” for everyone. When a founder assumes abundance, urgency fades. Decisions soften. Risks are delayed. Competitors become background characters rather than real threats.
But founders who understand scarcity, who know markets consolidate and reward early separation, build differently. They move with sharper instincts. They prepare for consolidation. They treat competitors seriously. They understand that dominance is built long before the market recognizes it.
Dominance isn’t arrogance or hostility. Dominance is preparation.
Separation Is Strategy, Not Ego
Founders aiming for scale don’t chase coexistence. They chase distance.
- Distance protects margins.
- Distance attracts top talent.
- Distance creates inevitability.
And inevitability becomes extremely difficult to challenge once it sets in.
Markets reward the companies that break away, not the companies that politely share space. Scarcity governs everything, attention, talent, trust, capital, time, and founders who understand this early build with a completely different psychology.
They’re not trying to be “one of the players.” They’re building so far ahead that the market eventually revolves around them.
The Simple, Uncomfortable Truth
A founder doesn’t need everyone else to lose. But a founder does need to win. And winning rarely comes from believing that the market is generous, abundant, and equally available to all. It comes from seeing the world clearly and acting early, consistently, and decisively.
There isn’t enough for everyone. There never was. There never will be. Some founders build to compete. Some build to coexist.
A rare few build to separate, and those are the companies the market remembers.