We get asked these questions all the time at Cleartrip -- *Isn't the online travel space very crowded? Aren't there lots of companies in there? Aren't you guys worried about the increasing competition?

Put simply, at Cleartrip, we're not really focused on "the space" or the "other companies."

At a TiE Midwest panel in Chicago, Lucas Roh, CEO of Hostway answered far more eloquently than I can:

We just do what we do best. We focus on our business, our customers, and our vision. Most businesses self destruct anyway so we just make sure ours doesn't. Focusing too much on what everyone else is doing is a sure way to run your own business out of control.

Kathy Sierra recently posted some blasphemously good advice in a post entitled Ignore the competition

What would happen if we completely, utterly, totally ignored the competition? What if we stopped thinking about competition at all? Perhaps if we devote all of our attention to users (and our own ability to innovate), we'll stop being dragged off into areas that build our feature list, but often at the expense of users. That development time might be better spent.

It's The Feature Arms Race that leads to so much sameness among products!

It's The Feature Arms Race that leads to the bloody kicking and clawing and fighting for market share. The Feature Arms Race is a form of group think, and we all know that design-by-committee does not produce art. We must wean ourselves off the obsession with the competition. If we're constantly trying to one-up them--or even just stay up with them--how does this really serve the users? How does it help the users kick ass if we're so focused making sure our feature lists kick ass?

Kathy has a great graphic to illustrate: