Make it cost prohibitive for your competitors to follow you

Optimizing too early stunts iterative discovery. Instead spend significant money so that it becomes a barrier for others to follow.

For example, many corporates like Google, Apple, McDonalds, Jio, etc. think of themselves as ecosystem and thus invest in and sustain suppliers/investments to expand the entry barrier for competitors, even if their aren’t enough immediate cash returns from those suppliers/investments.