Fast follower: strategy, examples and risks

A fast follower is a company that lets a competitor launch a new product, feature or idea first, then enters soon after with an improved version, using what the pioneer revealed about demand, pricing and mistakes. It is a deliberate strategy, not a polite name for being late.

The logic is simple: the pioneer pays to prove the market and the follower collects the lessons. That is the second mover advantage.

Fast follower examples

Instagram Stories. In August 2016 Instagram launched Stories, a format Snapchat had made popular. Asked whether Snapchat deserved credit, Instagram's chief executive Kevin Systrom told TechCrunch: "They deserve all the credit." His argument was that the format was not the point: "This is about a format, and how you take it to a network and put your own spin on it."

Google. Google was not the first search engine. Several, AltaVista among them, were already popular when it launched in 1998. It won by doing the core job better.

Category leaders in general. In Golder and Tellis's 1993 study of 50 product categories, the lasting leaders were usually not the pioneers but early entrants that arrived, on average, 13 years later. The numbers are on the first mover advantage page.

A small business version. Say a rival gym in your town starts reformer Pilates classes. Over two months their timetable fills, their ads for it keep running, and their reviews complain about class sizes and a clumsy booking system. You launch smaller classes with easy online booking. That is fast following at local scale.

What the follower gets: the second mover advantage

• Proof of demand. The pioneer's results, visible in its ads, reviews and hiring, show whether anyone wants it.
• A tested price. Their pricing page shows what the market accepted, and any changes show what it did not.
• A list of what is missing. Early reviews are a specification for the better version.
• Cheaper education. Buyers already understand the category.
• Settled technology and standards. You build for the version that won, not the version that came first.

How a fast follower uses competitor monitoring

Fast following depends on seeing launches early and reading them correctly. The loop has four steps.

1. Watch. Track the signals that a rival is launching or testing something.

2. Wait for a sign of success. Launching is cheap; keeping something going is not. An ad still running after a couple of months, a new tier that survives the next pricing change, or reviews that mention the feature by name all suggest it is working. An ad pulled after a week suggests it is not. Seeing every ad a competitor is running explains how to read run times.

3. Test small. A landing page, a waitlist or a limited version for existing customers. Measure interest before you build the whole thing.

4. Launch the better version. Built from the gaps in their reviews, priced with what their pricing page taught you, and with a clear answer to "why not just use theirs?"

For step 1, tracking competitor website changes covers sitemaps and page monitors. Figo checks named competitors' new pages, pricing and Google, Meta and TikTok ads once a week and sends the changes in a Monday briefing; ours, so judge accordingly. A wider list is in the best competitor monitoring tools.

The risks of a fast follower strategy

The window closes. If the pioneer builds network effects or high switching costs, following later means fighting a locked-in customer base. Judge this before you decide to wait.

You see the launch, not the results. Public signals are partial. A busy ad campaign can be a failing product being pushed hard.

Copying the wrong thing. Followers copy the visible features and miss the reason it worked, such as the pioneer's audience or distribution.

Becoming a permanent follower. A business that only ever follows has no positioning of its own, and customers notice. Follow selectively, where you can do something clearly better, and lead where you can.