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How to stop building the same thing as everyone else

By Pat Villaceran

Open your feed, and you'll see the same product again and again. When someone asks me how to come up with a unique business idea, my answer is simple. Write your own move down before you look at the market. Research on design fixation shows that once you've seen someone else's solution, your ideas drift towards it, even when it's flawed. So start from what is true about you. Put your move on paper. Then go and see what everyone else built.

To come up with a unique business idea, write your own idea down before you look at the market. Research on design fixation shows why. In 1991, David Jansson and Steven Smith found that designers shown an example solution kept reproducing its features. In one experiment, students told not to use straws still drew more straw designs after seeing an example cup with a leaking straw. A 2020 paper by Keelin Leahy and colleagues found that new designs often share an example's features even with its flaws pointed out.

Everyone follows the same advice and ends up with the same product

Scroll for a minute. You'll see the same pitch deck layout. You'll see the same landing page with the same gradient. You'll see the same "AI for X" line, where X is whatever was hot on Tuesday. Most of these founders think they're early.

In the episode on the sameness trap (S1 E1), I took a sleep app apart. You ask the user: "Are you a male or female? And then the app makes it blue and makes it pink if you're male and female." Then it connects to your watch and tracks you. "It's the same. It's the sameness trap."

I'm not sneering at anyone. "If that's a problem you're trying to solve, amazing, amazing, go for it... But the conversation is about innovation." And I've felt the pull myself. When 10 people you respect are building in one direction, going the other way feels like a mistake.

See the market's answer first and it ends up in your build

Picture the first hour of a new idea. You search the space. You read the launch posts. You screenshot the competitor's pricing page. Then you sit down to think, with somebody else's answer already in your head. What comes out, you call "our idea".

Laziness? I don't buy it. Most founders I know work stupidly hard. The copying happens in that first hour, and it happens to smart people.

There's data on this. In 1991, David Jansson and Steven Smith at Texas A&M called it design fixation: "a blind adherence to a set of ideas or concepts limiting the output of conceptual design." They gave engineers a design problem. Some also saw an example solution first. The ones who saw it kept reproducing its features in their own designs.

It wasn't only students. In their write-up, both students and professional engineers showed the same effect. And it held across several different design problems. Experience didn't make anyone immune.

The straw that leaked

In one experiment the example coffee cup used a straw that leaked. The students were told plainly not to use straws. The group shown the example still drew more straw designs.

A 2020 paper revisiting the work put it plainly: after seeing an example, "even with its flaws pointed out", new designs often share its features. Being told the example is bad doesn't stop you copying it.

That paper has a twist. Keelin Leahy and colleagues ran the test again with 185 incoming engineering students. Some students drew their own first idea instead of being shown one. They stuck to it. Even more closely than the others stuck to the example. A structured idea-generation tool in a second round reduced the sticking in both groups. And so you can get stuck in two ways. Somebody else's answer can hold you. So can your own first answer.

A faster copy keeps you in someone else's game

Two founders notice they're copying. One sits and waits. The other speeds up. I described both on our site: "Some wait for a lightning-bolt idea that never lands. Some copy the leader faster and call it execution."

Both start from the page everyone else is reading. The one waiting for lightning is still staring at the feed. The one copying faster is racing on a track someone else drew. As I said in our second episode: "If you're copying every single format there is, it's the same CRM, it's the same features and functionality, but we made it a bit faster... You will be on the market pie chart."

There's a third way. You can train it. It starts with what you already know.

What is true about you, your DNA, comes before the market

Think about the town you grew up in and the job you hated. Think about the customer you served for six years before you founded anything. Or the trade you know. Your family ran a shop in it. Your competitors don't have that history, and they can't look it up.

That is why I keep sending founders back there. When we recorded the agents episode (not yet released), I said "we're always teaching founders to always go back to what is true for them in their DNA". And: "It is about the identity of the founder and their unique experiences in life and how you adapt that experience in the problem solving by removing all the noise around you so you're not copying everyone's solution…"

Or, as I told Nathan: "You cannot be Elon Musking yourself if that is not your DNA."

Removing the noise is the discipline. You don't look at the market's answer until you've written your own. Jansson and Smith are the reason I'm strict about the order. Seeing an example pulls you in. So the order you look at things decides how original you can be.

Write your move, then check competitors

Tomorrow, before you open a browser, take a blank page. Write your own answer before you research anyone else's. It's simple. It's uncomfortable too. You sit with your own thinking before you get the comfort of seeing what others did.

1. Name the pattern. Write one sentence on the default move in your space. "Every scheduling tool now has an AI assistant bolted on." "Every new fintech app leads with a debit card." Be specific.

2. Write what is true for you. Before any research, write three things you know about this problem from your own life, not from the internet. Think of customers you've served, places you've worked and mistakes you've made with your own money. Nothing there? That's useful too. It may not be your problem to solve.

3. Write three moves. Give each one a single sentence. What would you build if you'd never seen anyone else's version? Three, because your own first idea can trap you as easily as a competitor's. Put a date on the page.

4. Now look. Search the space. Read the launch posts. Look at the competitor's pricing page. Where your move matches theirs, they may have got it right. Where it doesn't, keep it. That's what makes your company different.

5. Collide. Take one idea from a completely different field. Test your move against it. How would a city planner handle this? How did a trade from 100 years ago solve it?

Steps 1 to 3 are quick. Most founders skip them anyway. They're the only part where you're not reading someone else's answer.

Sometimes the crowd is right

You walk into a trade show. 10 stands are selling the same thing. Yes, for sure, there may well be real demand there. If you build something different only because it's different, the crowd is still choosing for you.

What I want is for you to know which parts of your plan are yours and which parts you absorbed. The line that came from your own experience is the one you can defend in a pitch, a hiring conversation and a bad month. A plan that came from the feed folds when the feed moves on. Sooner or later, it does.

Nobody will give you permission, founder

Copying feels safe. If it fails, the whole category failed, and nobody blames you. Building your own thing means owning the result. For me, that's the job.

Where the numbered reads start

If you want to go back to the beginning, No. 001 is "The Flawed Metaphor".

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