Netflix’s biggest competitor is sleep.
Yes. According to Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings, Netflix biggest competitor isn’t HBO or Amazon Prime, but it is sleep. More specifically — “There’s such a broad range of things that you did to relax and unwind, hang out, and connect–and we compete with all of that.” In other words, what Netflix, YouTube & even Instagram actually compete against is a user’s time. Similarly, Uber isn’t in the business of selling rides; At its core it helps its customer save time & save energy (make their life more comfortable). As Gary Vaynerchuk puts it, Uber is in the business of selling you back your time. Time is a scarce resource.
The other two scarce resource that form the basis of any user’s core needs are money and energy (comfort). Many products, tech or otherwise, at their very core either help save or compete for the customer’s scarcest resources — time, money and energy. Being able to solve for these core needs forms the framework for many successful products because people will overpay you for doing so. And it is also important for any product to be successful to figure out which core basic human need are they addressing.
Technology changes very fast, but the core human psychological needs remain the same. As Jeff Bezos puts it that a lot may change in 10 years but Amazon customers would always want lower prices (money) and faster shipping (time). Amazon’s strategy was built by focusing on these core customer needs.
