Jaipur and the Art of Strategic Timing

“If you ain’t first, you’re last.”

-Ricky Bobby

Act now, don’t delay! Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today! The early bird gets the worm! There are countless sayings and mottoes telling us taking action sooner rather than later is of the utmost importance. There is a lot of truth to these notions and the advice is often solid, but are there exceptions to this rule? After all, it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.

Strategic timing: Act now or wait?

I wish I could reveal to you the secret of when to act and when to wait, but unfortunately like many things in life, there are no hard and fast rules. While there is no magic bullet or miracle solution to this problem, I can share some insights that will help you make more informed decisions. In today’s post we’re looking at two core concepts of strategic timing: First mover advantage and strategic delay.

First mover advantage

There is power in being the first to do something. When people ask me what I do for fun and I tell them I play a lot of board games, I’m inevitably met with “oh, like Monopoly?” And after a small part of me dies inside, I tell them “No, the board game industry has come a long, long, long way since we were kids.” So why is it always Monopoly? That is the power of the first mover advantage. For most kids, Monopoly is the first strategic board game they played (no offense Candy Land), and now it lives rent free in their heads.

Being the first to get a product or service to market has a number of advantages. The first is gaining the support of a group of buyers known as the early adopters. These are the people who always seek out the latest and greatest new thing. If you have a high quality offering, they will sing your praises to just about everyone they meet, becoming your own unofficial marketing team. Moving first in a market gives a firm an advantage against their future competition since they start off uncontested for those early adopters. Once a company gains someone’s business, they often keep that customer, not only through loyalty, but through switching costs; sometimes actual monetary cost and sometimes mental or emotional.

Tesla’s first mover advantage

If I asked you to think of an electric car brand, chances are Tesla is the first company to come to mind. According to data from Edmunds, Tesla held 48.6% of the electrical vehicle market in the US in 2024. While that is down from the nearly 80% it commanded in 2019, it’s still very impressive especially since Ford had the second largest share at just 7.9%. Tesla took a gamble when they went to market, considering the infrastructure to support EVs didn’t exist yet, but it paid off in spades for them. By building out the infrastructure, Tesla was also able to set the standards for equipment that influenced parts used by those companies that followed.

Strategic delay

Being the first to enter a market isn’t always a guaranteed advantage however. Strategic delay, sometimes called second mover advantage or fast follower advantage, also has its share of potential benefits. When you are the first ever to do something, you are inherently the best at that thing, but in the same way, you are also the worst. By following after an innovator, companies have the benefit of learning from the mistakes of those that came before them and can release an improved version of a product or service. Starting from scratch can be costly both in time and money, both of which can be saved by building from a foundation that already exists.

Facebook’s fast follow

Like many people my age, my first friend was Tom. Now Tom was a pretty cool guy who helped you express yourself, but he wasn’t perfect. He liked to cause drama by making friends compete for the top spot within a friend group. For the younger readers who don’t get this reference, look up MySpace’s early features (IYKYK).

Not long after MySpace launched, another social media platform entered the space: Facebook. In the beginning, Facebook had a key restriction that on the surface may sound like a detriment, but ultimately served to catapult Facebook ahead of its competitors. To sign up for Facebook, you needed a college email address. This meant the site was originally restricted to college students, rather than the general public. They also didn’t allow for the profile aesthetic and music player options that MySpace did, giving less creative control to their users but keeping a more professional feel.

The combination of their focused market and restrictions helped Facebook capture a number of users from MySpace and helped them build momentum. After a few years, Facebook opened sign up to the general public and evolved into the social media behemoth we know today as Meta. By learning from the mistakes of their early competitors, Facebook succeeded greatly as a fast follower.

Jaipur: The art of strategic timing

In the two player card trading game Jaipur, players act as personal shoppers for the Maharajah, competing to be named the best merchant. On their turns, players buy or sell goods, looking to make the best deals. The first goods to be sold during a round are done so at a higher price but players are also rewarded for selling large quantities at once, creating strategic tension.

Sell fast for the best price, Sell many for a bonus

With the exception of the silver goods, each commodity starts off at a higher sale price that gradually decreases as more of that good are sold to the market. This means you might sell silk or spice for $5 on round 1 and only $1 on rounds 4 or 5. This incentivizes players to sell a particular commodity, even if that means forgoing the bulk sale bonuses.

Players are not forced to sell goods on their turns, and may accumulate a hand of goods over time. Whenever a player sells 3, 4, or 5 goods of a single type at once, they are rewarded with a bonus chip worth a random amount from $1-10, with the bonuses on the 4 and 5 goods chips worth progressively more.

Act now or wait?

The answer to that question lies in the information you have at hand. On your turn, you can see what you already have in your hand, what cards are available in the market, and the current price of the commodities. You might not know exactly what cards your opponent has, but if this isn’t the first turn of the round, you at least know what cards they’ve picked up. Let’s look at two scenarios together, one where it makes sense to act first and one where it makes sense to wait.

• Act now: As we can see in the picture below, on our opponent’s next turn, they are going to collect a bunch of silk to trade in for a large bonus. Since they are about to tank the price of silk, it makes sense to trade the single card from our hand to at least get some good value from it, while taking those points away from your opponent.

  

• Wait: In the photo below, we see a hand full of gold with another available in the market. In this scenario, it makes sense to take the additional gold from the market before trading in, thereby getting a larger bonus. The number of gold cards in the deck are much more limited than, say, leather, so the likelihood of your opponent cashing in first is low.

Putting it into practice

In the introduction, I said there were no hard and fast rules or magic bullets for determining whether acting now or waiting is the correct choice. Through practice you will learn the signs to look for and build up intuition as to the right choice. Here are some questions to ask when faced with this kind of decision:

• What do I miss out on by waiting? If someone or another firm were to get to market first with this same idea, what would the negative consequences be? If this is something you can quantify, all the better. If the consequences are great, it makes sense to act now.

  
  

• What do I gain by waiting? If taking extra time to learn more, improve on a design or idea will pay off quickly, it’s probably worth holding off. A caveat though – you can almost always make the argument that if you just knew a little bit more, or improved a little more on the design, it will all be worth it. This can become a trap that prevents you from ever taking action, so be careful not to use it as a crutch.

  
  

• Can I be my own fast follower? In tech and product design, there is a concept known as the minimum viable product, or MVP. This is a product or service that meets the barest criteria for release to the public and allows a company to launch. The idea is they can start gaining customers early and quickly add or improve features, post-release, to provide more value. This is an exceptional middle ground option when pulled off correctly.

One final thought. I had a strategy professor in school whose motto was essentially “Action > Inaction.” If faced with a decision where you can’t be sure whether acting or waiting is the right answer, always err on the side of taking action. As the old saying goes “fortune favors the bold.” So before you next take action, ask yourself "Am I going for the early worm, or the whole wheel of cheese?"