Last week I was invited to speak to the full product team at Oura during their San Francisco on-site. Towards the end of my talk, someone asked what I thought about competition — how much should the team focus on what competitors are doing?
It’s a fitting question for times. The consumer health market could not be more competitive; and yet, just days later, Oura announced the close of their ~$900 million Series E fundraise at an $11 billion valuation. For a company that started as a Finnish sleep-tracking kickstarter project, it’s an extraordinary milestone, the kind of success that naturally invites comparison: who’s ahead, who’s behind, who’s coming next.
When the question came up, the first thing that came to my mind wasn’t Apple, or Garmin, or any other worthy competitor in our space; it was my five-year-old son, James.
James loves to race. At the playground, at home, anywhere he can run against someone, he will. But I’ve noticed something: when he runs, he constantly looks behind him to see where the other person is. He twists his head to the side, checks over his shoulder, and slows his pace just enough to lose momentum (or crash into a wall).
“Look ahead,” I tell him. “Don’t look behind you — you’ll fall. Just keep running as fast as you can. Listen behind you if you need, but if you turn your head, you’ll always slow down and lose.”
He struggles with it. He still looks back. Still veers toward walls. The instinct to know where you stand is powerful — even when it works against you.
I’m not proposing we ignore competition. That would be naive. In consumer health and biometric tracking, especially now with AI-powered insights coming out of every device, the landscape is crowded and fast-moving. We of course have to understand the context of the game we are playing: who are the players are, what are they good at, where are the opportunities for differentiation, and what are your own real advantages. And as I always say - we of course have to understand what winning looks like.
But there’s a difference between understanding your competition and obsessing over them; Between listening and looking back.
When you’re constantly checking where others are, you’re no longer running your own race — you’re running theirs. Your roadmap becomes reactive. Your strategy becomes defensive. You end up playing someone else’s game instead of your own.
You can’t compete with different players in different games at the same time. You have to choose.
In health tech, there are many games happening in parallel:
The hardware game — sensor accuracy, battery life, form factor.
The software game — interface design, engagement, quality of insights.
The data game — validation, longitudinal depth, predictive power.
The ecosystem game — integrations, partnerships, developer platforms.
Different competitors specialize in different lanes. Some will outperform in one area. That’s fine — that’s expected. The question isn’t whether you can beat everyone at everything. It’s which game you’re playing, what it takes to win it, and how to build distance from anyone else in that lane.
At Oura, the advantage isn’t being the best at a single thing — it’s being excellent at multiple things at once: hardware, software, and data-powered insights. It’s a triathlon, not a sprint. Most competitors are trained for just one event. Oura built the foundation in the right order — hardware first, then data, then insights — and that compound advantage is hard to copy, and over time, it is why we have pulled ahead of the pack.
Competitors come and go. Features get copied. Customers evolve. Advantages erode. The only lasting strategy is a persistent push toward excellence — the discipline to keep expanding what’s possible.
That’s what “looking ahead” really means. It’s not about ignoring competition. It’s about being oriented toward your own goal, not distracted by the noise. It’s about knowing where you’re going clearly enough that you don’t need to keep checking if you’re still winning.
When James runs now, I remind him: the finish line is in front of you. You’ll hear if someone catches up — you’ll feel it. But the moment you turn your head, you’ve already lost. For those behind, looking ahead results in looking at the competition - the one leading the pack. But for the one leading, looking ahead means looking ahead.
The same is true for building products — and companies. Know the competition. Understand the game. Imagine what could change the rules. Imagine how you’ll adjust. But being competitive is not limited to beating the competition. It’s beating what you thought possible.
Winners don’t react to what others are doing.
Winners define where everyone else needs to go.
Look ahead.
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