It's widely believed that being first to market is the most effective catalyst for success, and while there are elements of this that are true, the core principle is flawed. There are lots of things that have to go right to find yourself in the lead of a new market, and being early is just one of them.
Let me tell you a story. In early 2020, while everyone was in lockdown, I was working in security, picking up shifts to meet rent. One of these shifts was at an office of the game development company Zynga, and from the moment I walked in I was blown away. Every office I had been in to that point had been dull, dated, and depressing. But Zynga was full of trinkets and props and toys, a staggered cushioned pyramid to lounge on, a VR room, IPA on tap. I realised very quickly that if I ever wanted to work somewhere like that, I would need to learn to make games, and seeing as I had already been eyeing up development as something to learn, I wasted no time. I jumped into game dev tutorials, followed Unity tutorials, made little clone games but nothing ever really stuck. The dream faded and my motivation waned as I settled into a lifetime of mediocre work. But then I had a pang of inspiration.
I had the idea for a triangular QR code. I thought that would have novel value for an ID design I was working on in my job, so I started digging around and realised how limited QR codes really were when it hit me. If you had 4 colours instead of 2, you could store twice the data. That's when the Quay Code was born. A CMYK 2D matrix code with an open spec and other versatile features. Truthfully I saw it as a stepping stone towards making the triangular code (still on the to-do list) but the further I dove into the complexities of data encoding, the more faith I had in the Quay Code as its own thing.
This is how I learned to code, by following this thread of inspiration and vision all the way to having a functioning WPF app that could create the code, and even read it (to a reasonable capacity). That project is still a massive point of pride for me, but it wasn't even 6 months later that I started seeing NaviLens codes on boxes of cereal. Go look them up because it's super interesting, but I was devastated. I realised that all this hard work would just look like I had ripped off their idea, regardless of the truth. I wasn't first to market, and I essentially gave up (at least for the time being).
I think this is the biggest problem with this race mentality. You lose if you don't finish first, so why bother finishing at all? The reality of course is that everyone who finishes is a winner, if you happen to give up then you were only ever in it for the medal.
I imagine most developers have product ideas where this exact scenario happens. They come up with something unique and interesting only to find out someone else thought of it first and (in what feels like a malicious attempt to undermine you) takes it to market before you even have a chance to build it.
I'm currently building something real. Something I had the idea for years ago and I've seen other companies do in similar ways, but the further I get into the project (at the resistance of feeling dejected by much larger competition) the more I realise how unique this product can be. The overarching idea is always going to bump up against someone else's, but the implementation, the target audience, the way you streamline user flow, all of it gives an edge that your competition can't match simply because it has personality.
The main conflict with personality in a product (in my experience) is money. Be it the way you monetise the product, or the investment (or lack thereof) into the product. This is an undeniable barrier to entry, and one I deeply resent. If I didn't have a family to support and a life to try and live, I would make everything for free because my focus is so often on making life easier and I feel that's undone by the stress of spending money, but then I know that's a somewhat subjective view on finance in general. Because of this though, I'm usually pretty poor, which means I also don't have the means to invest in projects I believe in.
I'm hitting this exact wall now, where I want to incorporate a company, but the expenses associated in both registering the company and preserving my relative anonymity is a fee I cannot afford to spare upfront, let alone the complexities and requirements of distributing commercial software (licencing, insurance, etc). But then I suppose you have to wonder whether you're making the right product. With services like Vercel, you can conceivable create something that generates wealth without spending anything but time, the only catch being it must ooze character.
It's a difficult triad to fall in the centre of because each point has its own sort of criteria. Money can be brute forced, but is not always available. Timing is unpredictable, being early is hard and can't really be brute forced without keen insight into market trajectories. And character/personality simply cannot be forced, it's a talent thing, a per person thing. Coordinating the state for success requires each of these, all culminating in what would, in retrospect, be referred to as 'luck'. There is no luck.
None of it can be manufactured. You just have to love doing it long enough to land in the right spot.