&gt;&gt; Is it possible to ever answer this in a meaningful way, besides &quot;we&#x27;re going to be the best and get mindshare and beat everyone out of the market&quot;?<p>Yes, here are a few examples:<p>1. Some businesses require a massive amount of capital upfront and won&#x27;t work in a iterative-lean-startup model. E.g. Tesla and SpaceX. I can&#x27;t think of many people who can pull that off.<p>2. Most startups are started because the founders &quot;live in the future&quot;, where the market isn&#x27;t really a market yet but it&#x27;s clear that there&#x27;s going to be one. Basically, potential investors and competitors think you&#x27;re wasting your time. I would say this is the most common thing at YC. When they &quot;get it&quot;, you&#x27;re already far ahead. Think of Paypal, Heroku, Reddit, optimizely or Stripe. (And hundred of others)<p>3. Owning the brand. I.e. You create some kind of horror app and you are Stephen King. Or, you&#x27;re a big player in a space and expand in another one using your existing network. For instance, think about how fitbit keep adding new products, selling them to their existing customers, etc.<p>4. Expertise. You are one of the best in the world. I.e. Working on a new fusion reactor or some quantum computing.<p>If you&#x27;re thinking &quot;Most startup don&#x27;t have those kind of competitive advantages&quot;, you&#x27;re right. And most startups fail.  Executing better than the competition or doing your best isn&#x27;t a competitive advantage, it&#x27;s just a coin flip.<p>To know if you have a real competitive advantage, you need to think that your competitors are going to raise more money, have a better team and execute better, but you should still beat them.