Why do so many online start-ups fall into the trap of thinking they have no competitors?

It’s nice to think you’ve come up with a great idea, but it’s naive to think nobody else has it.

Jill Tovey, of mycelebrityfashion.co.uk, told Jemima Kiss that “the beauty of [her] website” is that “[they] don’t really have competitors as such”.

So what about OSOYOU, Handbag, InStyle, Stylefinder, ShopStyle et al?

Does Jill really believe mycelebrityfashion.co.uk is the one and only? Or did she realise mentioning her competitors would give them a link (a search engine friendly on at that) from the Guardian’s website?

If the latter is true then she’s certainly a lot cannier than the gurus at MyFaveShop, who reeled off OSOYOU, Stylehive and Kaboodle as competitors - giving them all links.

Quite simply your competitors are the websites who are taking up the browser time of the people you want to be using your website.