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Should You Compete With (and Potentially Kill) Your Own Business? Adam Schwartz's t-shirt company was struggling. Instead of saving it, he built something new -- and better.

By Jason Feifer

This story appears in the April 2019 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

Inna Shnayder

Some entrepreneurs try to reinvent their brand. If business is suffering, they'll pivot repeatedly to spark that magical product-­market fit. And as Adam Schwartz's T-shirt company began suffering, he initially tried to do the same thing. Then he came to a different philosophy: "Kill your business with a better business," he says. In other words, if a business isn't working, take what you learn and launch a competitor.

That mentality just led him to a $41 million exit.

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