What's your competition? [bijansabet.com]

Asking an entrepreneur presenting a brand new idea about their competition isn’t that useful in my view. 

But I find that I’m asking that question more and more. Why? It’s not because I want to learn more about their market. I’m usually okay in that department. 

There are exceptions but I only ask it when I feel like the entrepreneur is potentially thinking about way too many ideas and products at the same time. It usually is a response to the founder telling me that about a long list of features and functionality and I don’t completely understand (or believe) the core offering.

So if you hear me asking about your competition, it’s really code for: are you trying to do too much, what do you really care about and why?