Essay
September 18th, 2025
The Persistence Of Mediocrity
Calvin Rhodes
Share
More Articles
880 words
5 min. read
The world likes to tell itself that the best products win. That the sharper design, the cleaner interface, the more powerful system will eventually rise to the top. Excellence, we assume, is rewarded. It feels logical, almost moral. And yet markets consistently prove otherwise. Look around and you find a landscape cluttered with mediocrity—products that are clumsy, services that frustrate, systems that work just enough to stay alive. They not only survive but entrench themselves, pushing aside rivals that were, in almost every respect, better.
One of the most famous examples is the format war between VHS and Betamax. Technically, Betamax was the superior product. It offered better picture quality, more durable tapes, and a compact design. Early reviewers praised its engineering. Sony, the company behind Betamax, assumed superiority would carry the day. They believed once consumers saw the difference, the choice would be obvious. Yet history played a different hand. VHS, backed by JVC and a wider network of manufacturers, prioritized other factors: longer recording time, cheaper licensing, broader distribution. Consumers valued the ability to record a full movie or a television program more than the marginal bump in picture clarity. Rental stores stocked more VHS titles because studios found it easier to mass-produce. Licensing deals meant multiple companies could sell VHS players, driving down cost and flooding the market. Betamax may have been excellent, but VHS was accessible, convenient, and available everywhere. That combination overwhelmed the technical edge. By the late 1980s, VHS had captured the world.
The lesson wasn’t that quality is irrelevant. It was that quality on its own is rarely decisive. Markets don’t line up behind the “best” product in a vacuum; they align around what becomes familiar, available, and good enough. Once VHS cemented itself as the default, the superior format was irrelevant. Consumers had invested in tapes, stores had stocked shelves, manufacturers had standardized hardware. Switching away from VHS, no matter how much better Betamax might have been, was no longer worth the hassle. The mediocre option became the permanent one.
Another enduring case is Microsoft Word. Ask anyone who has wrestled with Word whether it is the pinnacle of design, and the answer comes with a sigh. It is bloated, confusing, and filled with features most people never touch. It crashes at the worst moments. And yet it has been the dominant word processor for decades. The reason isn’t hidden: Word benefited from being bundled in Microsoft Office, which became the standard in business. Once .doc files became the universal format, the network effect was unbreakable. Schools taught students to use Word, companies exchanged documents in Word, governments distributed forms in Word. Superior alternatives appeared—WordPerfect, Google Docs in its early years, even minimalist editors that offered smoother experiences—but none could overcome the inertia of a world already standardized. Word was good enough to entrench itself, and once entrenched, it didn’t matter that it was mediocre.
These two stories are separated by decades and industries, but they point to the same underlying dynamic. Mediocrity persists because once a product captures attention, it enjoys the protection of inertia. Customers invest time, money, and habit into using it, and those investments raise the cost of switching. Distribution amplifies this effect: if something is everywhere, the fact of its presence becomes a competitive advantage. Ecosystems close the loop. When third parties, institutions, or partners build around a product, the product itself becomes harder to dislodge.
The persistence of mediocrity is humbling for anyone building something new. It reveals that markets are not talent shows where the best act wins. They are ecosystems shaped by convenience, habit, and momentum. People don’t flock to what is superior; they flock to what is already there. Once they are there, they rarely leave.
This does not mean quality is useless. What it means is that quality must combine with distribution, timing, or leverage strong enough to break existing habits. Dropbox succeeded not because it was flawless, but because it removed a point of friction—file syncing across devices—that old tools failed to address. Netflix rose not because DVDs by mail were revolutionary, but because the model undercut Blockbuster’s mediocrity in a way customers felt immediately: no late fees, wider selection, movies delivered to the door. The excellence wasn’t technical brilliance. It was clarity, applied to an entrenched pain point, sharp enough to shift behavior.
The harder truth is that many superior products will never get that chance. Founders often believe their invention will speak for itself. They underestimate how stubborn habits are. They imagine excellence will pull customers away from incumbents. But customers rarely move for better alone. They move when something forces them—when the new choice solves a problem so directly that staying with the old one feels impossible. Without that force, the incumbent’s mediocrity persists.
For startups, this is both depressing and instructive. Depressing because it means the graveyard is filled with products that were, in every meaningful sense, better. Instructive because it points to the real battleground. If you want to overthrow mediocrity, don’t rely on quality alone. Build distribution advantages, create ecosystems, or find wedges that make switching unavoidable. Recognize that the mediocre competitor is not weak. It is protected by layers of habit, perception, and infrastructure that quality cannot dissolve on its own.
The persistence of mediocrity also explains why perfectionism can be dangerous. Teams obsessed with polishing a product often delay too long, imagining the market will reward refinement. Meanwhile, mediocre competitors have already shipped something “good enough” and captured attention. By the time the masterpiece is ready, customers are entrenched elsewhere. What matters is not flawlessness but whether you can alter behavior before mediocrity cements itself.
The uncomfortable reality is that markets reward adequacy more often than brilliance. Mediocrity scales because it is easier to tolerate than to change. Once embedded, it becomes the default, and defaults are sticky. Excellence wins only when it pairs itself with leverage strong enough to force a shift. VHS and Word illustrate this with painful clarity. Neither was the pinnacle of its field. Both became fixtures of everyday life.
For founders, the lesson is not to aim for mediocrity but to respect its resilience. The mediocre competitor you dismiss today may outlast you tomorrow unless you design your product not only to be better but to become unavoidable. That requires more than technical superiority. It requires strategy that accounts for inertia, for distribution, for ecosystems, for habit. It requires clarity about what truly forces change.
Markets do not reward the best product automatically. They reward the one that embeds itself deeply enough that people stop questioning it. Mediocrity, once entrenched, becomes indistinguishable from inevitability. To overcome it, excellence must do more than shine—it must shift behavior so strongly that the mediocre option no longer feels tolerable. Otherwise, the world continues to run on systems that frustrate us, menus that confuse us, tools that creak under their own weight. And those systems persist not because they are great, but because they are good enough, and good enough is often the most powerful moat of all.
-Rhodes
Essay
September 18th, 2025
The Persistence Of
Mediocrity
Calvin Rhodes
Share
880 words
5 min. read
The world likes to tell itself that the best products win. That the sharper design, the cleaner interface, the more powerful system will eventually rise to the top. Excellence, we assume, is rewarded. It feels logical, almost moral. And yet markets consistently prove otherwise. Look around and you find a landscape cluttered with mediocrity—products that are clumsy, services that frustrate, systems that work just enough to stay alive. They not only survive but entrench themselves, pushing aside rivals that were, in almost every respect, better.
One of the most famous examples is the format war between VHS and Betamax. Technically, Betamax was the superior product. It offered better picture quality, more durable tapes, and a compact design. Early reviewers praised its engineering. Sony, the company behind Betamax, assumed superiority would carry the day. They believed once consumers saw the difference, the choice would be obvious. Yet history played a different hand. VHS, backed by JVC and a wider network of manufacturers, prioritized other factors: longer recording time, cheaper licensing, broader distribution. Consumers valued the ability to record a full movie or a television program more than the marginal bump in picture clarity. Rental stores stocked more VHS titles because studios found it easier to mass-produce. Licensing deals meant multiple companies could sell VHS players, driving down cost and flooding the market. Betamax may have been excellent, but VHS was accessible, convenient, and available everywhere. That combination overwhelmed the technical edge. By the late 1980s, VHS had captured the world.
The lesson wasn’t that quality is irrelevant. It was that quality on its own is rarely decisive. Markets don’t line up behind the “best” product in a vacuum; they align around what becomes familiar, available, and good enough. Once VHS cemented itself as the default, the superior format was irrelevant. Consumers had invested in tapes, stores had stocked shelves, manufacturers had standardized hardware. Switching away from VHS, no matter how much better Betamax might have been, was no longer worth the hassle. The mediocre option became the permanent one.
Another enduring case is Microsoft Word. Ask anyone who has wrestled with Word whether it is the pinnacle of design, and the answer comes with a sigh. It is bloated, confusing, and filled with features most people never touch. It crashes at the worst moments. And yet it has been the dominant word processor for decades. The reason isn’t hidden: Word benefited from being bundled in Microsoft Office, which became the standard in business. Once .doc files became the universal format, the network effect was unbreakable. Schools taught students to use Word, companies exchanged documents in Word, governments distributed forms in Word. Superior alternatives appeared—WordPerfect, Google Docs in its early years, even minimalist editors that offered smoother experiences—but none could overcome the inertia of a world already standardized. Word was good enough to entrench itself, and once entrenched, it didn’t matter that it was mediocre.
These two stories are separated by decades and industries, but they point to the same underlying dynamic. Mediocrity persists because once a product captures attention, it enjoys the protection of inertia. Customers invest time, money, and habit into using it, and those investments raise the cost of switching. Distribution amplifies this effect: if something is everywhere, the fact of its presence becomes a competitive advantage. Ecosystems close the loop. When third parties, institutions, or partners build around a product, the product itself becomes harder to dislodge.
The persistence of mediocrity is humbling for anyone building something new. It reveals that markets are not talent shows where the best act wins. They are ecosystems shaped by convenience, habit, and momentum. People don’t flock to what is superior; they flock to what is already there. Once they are there, they rarely leave.
This does not mean quality is useless. What it means is that quality must combine with distribution, timing, or leverage strong enough to break existing habits. Dropbox succeeded not because it was flawless, but because it removed a point of friction—file syncing across devices—that old tools failed to address. Netflix rose not because DVDs by mail were revolutionary, but because the model undercut Blockbuster’s mediocrity in a way customers felt immediately: no late fees, wider selection, movies delivered to the door. The excellence wasn’t technical brilliance. It was clarity, applied to an entrenched pain point, sharp enough to shift behavior.
The harder truth is that many superior products will never get that chance. Founders often believe their invention will speak for itself. They underestimate how stubborn habits are. They imagine excellence will pull customers away from incumbents. But customers rarely move for better alone. They move when something forces them—when the new choice solves a problem so directly that staying with the old one feels impossible. Without that force, the incumbent’s mediocrity persists.
For startups, this is both depressing and instructive. Depressing because it means the graveyard is filled with products that were, in every meaningful sense, better. Instructive because it points to the real battleground. If you want to overthrow mediocrity, don’t rely on quality alone. Build distribution advantages, create ecosystems, or find wedges that make switching unavoidable. Recognize that the mediocre competitor is not weak. It is protected by layers of habit, perception, and infrastructure that quality cannot dissolve on its own.
-Rhodes
The persistence of mediocrity also explains why perfectionism can be dangerous. Teams obsessed with polishing a product often delay too long, imagining the market will reward refinement. Meanwhile, mediocre competitors have already shipped something “good enough” and captured attention. By the time the masterpiece is ready, customers are entrenched elsewhere. What matters is not flawlessness but whether you can alter behavior before mediocrity cements itself.
The uncomfortable reality is that markets reward adequacy more often than brilliance. Mediocrity scales because it is easier to tolerate than to change. Once embedded, it becomes the default, and defaults are sticky. Excellence wins only when it pairs itself with leverage strong enough to force a shift. VHS and Word illustrate this with painful clarity. Neither was the pinnacle of its field. Both became fixtures of everyday life.
For founders, the lesson is not to aim for mediocrity but to respect its resilience. The mediocre competitor you dismiss today may outlast you tomorrow unless you design your product not only to be better but to become unavoidable. That requires more than technical superiority. It requires strategy that accounts for inertia, for distribution, for ecosystems, for habit. It requires clarity about what truly forces change.
Markets do not reward the best product automatically. They reward the one that embeds itself deeply enough that people stop questioning it. Mediocrity, once entrenched, becomes indistinguishable from inevitability. To overcome it, excellence must do more than shine—it must shift behavior so strongly that the mediocre option no longer feels tolerable. Otherwise, the world continues to run on systems that frustrate us, menus that confuse us, tools that creak under their own weight. And those systems persist not because they are great, but because they are good enough, and good enough is often the most powerful moat of all.