ONE OF THE BENEFITS of having served as self-proclaimed Chief Big Ass of the fan company I founded—and being Founding Contrarian of an investment company—is that I'm frequently asked for business advice on things like funding and operations. But there's one subject in particular that seems to consistently be on everyone's mind: how to deal with the com petition, the monster lurking beneath every entre preneur's bed.
I've often said that everything you need to know about business can be found in Aesop's Fables, and, sure enough, Aesop focused several of his tales on competing forces—as in “The North Wind and the Sun,” which describes a contest to determine the more powerful of the two, and ultimately teaches that gentleness is more persuasive than brute force.
Perhaps the best-known of his tales, though, is “The Hare and the Tortoise,” in which slow and steady—say it with me—wins
