One of the questions startups frequently get from prospective investors is: why won't the big incumbents (Epic, Cerner, or whoever) just do what you're doing and put you out of business? This is always a difficult question for a founder to answer because the reasons often aren't obvious and can be hard to describe. The difficulty of bringing something new to the market is typically underestimated, and the details really matter. And often, these details aren't well understood by a casual observer. See this excellent post that Chris Dixon wrote back in the day on what he calls the Idea Maze to understand why the answer can be hard to understand from the outside.

I was chatting with an investor last week who had a good way of summarizing why startups have one fundamental advantage over incumbents: they simply can't afford to quit.

For a startup, failure isn’t just a setback—it can mean the end of the business, the loss of investor money, and reputational harm to the founder. This makes persistence almost a necessity.

Large companies, on the other hand, often have a lower threshold for pulling the plug. If a new product doesn’t show quick growth or the market looks small, they cut their losses and move on. For them, it’s just another line item in their budget; for startups, it’s survival.

This urgency forces startups to be more resourceful, nimble, and focused. Where big companies might give up too early, startups are far more likely to push through.

And very often, that’s where the real breakthroughs happen—not because they have more resources, but because they have no choice but to persevere.

Of course, this topic is way, way more complicated. And I'll write more about it at some point. But sometimes, it's simply the refusal to quit that makes all the difference.