170,000 years ago – Clothes. Africans started wearing clothes before migrating to colder climates at higher latitudes.
40,000 years ago – Shoes. Researchers have found several differences between feet that regularly wear shoes and those that don’t. It could be traced back to 40,000 years ago.
7,000 years ago – Makeup. The Africans used red mineral pigments (red ochre) and crayons.
5,000 years ago – Jewelries. The first signs of established jewelry making in Ancient Egypt was around 3,000–5,000 years ago.
1,200 years ago – Socks. the first socks were actually made from leather or matted animal hair – called “piloi” in 8th century BC Greece.
700 years ago – Glasses. The first eyeglasses were made in Northern Italy, most likely in Pisa, by about 1290.
500 years ago – Watches. The concept of the wristwatch goes back to the production of the very earliest watches in the 16th century.
400 years ago – Wallets. Wallets were developed after the introduction of paper currency to the West in the 1600s.
56 years ago – Pagers. The first successful consumer pager was Motorola’s Pageboy I, first introduced in 1964.
47 years ago – Mobile phones. The first handheld cellular mobile phone was demonstrated by John F. Mitchell and Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973
28 years ago – Smart phones. The first smartphone, created by IBM, was invented in 1992 and released for purchase in 1994. It was called the Simon Personal Communicator (SPC).
24 years ago – Personal digital assistants. Pilot was the name of the first generation of personal digital assistants manufactured by Palm Computing in 1996.
20 years ago – Smart watches. First Linux Smartwatch was presented at IEEE ISSCC2000 on 7 Feb 2000, where presenter Steve Mann was named “the father of wearable computing”.
There are probably many lessons we can draw from this. I have one too – the first mover is usually not the one that creates a successful business out of it. Biology has already taught us that the fastest sperm that reaches the egg first is not the one that fertilizes it.
Don’t worry too much about being the first mover. Go for it!