I was standing in the net, and it suddenly occurred to me: my team was much better than I thought they were.  That was a complete change in conclusion from just a few minutes prior.  I couldn’t help but notice the similarities to a startup.  How good is your startup’s team, really?  How good is the competition’s team?

It was just over halfway through a game of pick-up hockey at the Breck Ice Arena in suburban Golden Valley, Minnesota.  Since I was playing goalie, I had just swapped nets with the other goaltender.  In pick-up hockey the teams are assigned randomly by splitting a jumbled mess of sticks prior to the game.  The goalies switch sides halfway through the game to lessen the goaltending bias.

As the goalie, I got to see both teams play, and I was able to count each group as my teammates.  At the beginning of the game, I thought that my first team (”lights”) was dominating the other team (”darks”).  The puck was on the other end of the ice for what seemed like most of the time, and the shots I did face were easily manageable.  The only goal I allowed in the first 45 minutes was on a rebound after I made a save on a breakaway.  In contrast, the other goalie was being lit up with shots and goals.  With the time to switch sides drawing near, I was a little disappointed by the prospect of leaving the dominating team and joining the dominated group.

I was wrong.  Oh, how I was wrong.

I switched sides and… nothing.  I just stood there.  Even fewer shots came my way, and when the puck did manage to make it into my defensive zone, it was gone again within seconds.  The makeup of the teams, other than the goalies, had not changed, but my perception had.  I realized that those I had believed to be the dominated were  in fact the dominators.

How could that have happened?  For one thing, during the second half, I had an accurate external reference (a clock) to inform my perception of the game.  As a goalie, I tend not to notice the passage of time while the puck is in my zone, but when it’s on the other end of the ice, time slows to a crawl.  For another, I had misjudged the talent of the individual players.  I had believed that the players on my first team were better than they really were simply because they were on my team; ipso facto, they had to be the best players on the ice.

So it goes with startups.

A startup is like a sports team.  You’re playing against other startups.  Even though all of the players might be acquaintances, some are known better than others, and some have reputations that have become larger than life.  The upshot is that it can be difficult to judge the skill possessed by the other company without experiencing it firsthand from the inside.  Are the engineers superstars or mere mortals?  Does management have it together?  How good is their plan?  Was their highly publicized misstep actually inconsequential?  Likewise, it can be nearly impossible to accurately assess the states of the competition’s products.   Are they launching tomorrow?  Are they having trouble gettng started?  Have they run into major problems?  Are they pimping vapor?  You just don’t know.

Competitive intelligence can be useful, such as that obtained by interviewing mutual industry contacts (this is done in the medical device field quite often).  Investors, too, are well connected.  Job postings can tell you a lot. Social encounters might also be informative.  So can the lack of them — are all of the competitor’s employees working late instead of partying?

Ultimately, the best you can manage is a guess.  But when you guess, don’t underestimate the other team or overestimate your own.