One of the common traits of successful founders that I see: They don’t lower the bar by comparing themselves or their company with others that underperform or have lower standards.
Some of their competitors are badly run companies – misspending investors’ money, suffering from internal drama, you name it.
When good founders see these companies, they don’t ridicule or become complacent. They know their own company could be two mistakes away from becoming just like that. They take lessons and move on. They don’t say things like “Wow, look at this other company, they wasted $10M investor money.. while we only wasted $2M investor money.” They never lower the bar.
Just because your competitors are bad doesn’t automatically make you good – while some of your competitors might be really bad, you could be slightly bad 🙂 Let’s not lower the bar.