The proverb survives because the first mover wins often enough to feel like a law. The empirical record on first-mover advantage is mixed, and the cases in which the second mover won are not exceptions but a pattern.
1. The claim as it is usually told
First is best. Being first to market confers advantage that compounds; the first mover captures the brand, the distribution, the standards, and the talent, and the later entrants compete uphill. The slogan is most often deployed in startup advice ("be the first"), in publishing advice ("get there before the trend"), and in product advice ("ship before anyone else"). The framing is unambiguous: first is a strategic asset, second is a defensive position. The slogan is treated as if it were a measurement rather than a preference.
2. Where it originated as far as can be established
The proverb is seventeenth-century English, recorded in Thomas Heywood's Dialogue containing ... the proverbs and epigrams (1635) and similar compilations of the period. The modern strategic restatement draws on a different source: Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma (1997), which describes the pattern by which incumbents lose to entrants who build for a new market the incumbent does not serve — and which has been widely, and partially misleadingly, read as a first-mover doctrine. The proverb's strategic version conflates two distinct claims: that the entrant to a new category captures disproportionate value, and that being earliest in time is what produces that capture. The conflation is the source of the slogan.
3. What it left out
Two large omissions. First, the empirical record on first-mover advantage is mixed. Studies on the topic in the strategy literature, summarised in Tellis and Golder's Will and Vision (2002) and in subsequent meta-analytic work, find that first-mover advantage exists in some categories and is negative in others, with the distribution roughly symmetric. The slogan treats the category in which first-mover advantage is real as if it were universal. Second, the cases in which the second mover wins are not exceptions — they are a pattern. The pattern is well-documented in categories where network effects require scale to be useful, and in categories where the technology platform shifts after the first mover's design is committed. In both, being early in time is a smaller variable than being right on the design, on the platform, and on the moment.
4. The counter-example
The list is long and was visible to anyone working in those categories at the time. Google launched after Yahoo and after a handful of earlier search engines; Yahoo declined over the decade that followed. Facebook launched after MySpace and Friendster, and most of the social networks that preceded it; MySpace declined over the decade that followed. The iPhone launched into a smartphone market BlackBerry and Nokia already dominated; the dominant operating systems ten years later were iOS and Android. VHS launched after Betamax and won the format war. Windows shipped after the Macintosh and won the desktop operating-system market. Microsoft Office displaced Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, neither of which was first. None of these second movers succeeded by copying; each succeeded by waiting for the first mover to commit to a design and then shipping a better one. The pattern is consistent enough that it has been given its own name: the fast-follower strategy.
5. What the honest version would be
Be right, on a platform that matters, at a moment the market is ready to receive it. The order in time matters less than the order in quality. Three clauses. The first is the design claim — the second mover's advantage is design, not timing. The second is the platform claim — both first and second movers need a platform that compounds, and the second mover usually has more information about which platforms do. The third is the timing claim — markets are not always ready; the right time is not always the first time. The slogan collapses three claims into one. The honest version admits the conditions under which the rule holds.