Startups Tips for Competing
Series # 025
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 025:
The 5 Strategies Startups Can Use to Compete With a Behemoth Like Google
Balaji Viswanathan, CEO of Invento Robotics, on Quora
Since large companies are too slow to move, find market areas where speed is the essence.
Big companies often fail against determined startups.
All said, it is statistically unlikely for anyone to win Google in any product category. But, where is glory if you are not doing statistically unlikely things?
https://www.inc.com/quora/t5-strategies-startups-can-use-to-compete-with-a-behemoth-like-google.html
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 024:How startups should deal with competition ?
New businesses entering a busy market need to offer something different and better than everyone else
Ultimately, competition is what makes products and services appealing for a consumer. By driving performance and innovation, while bringing down prices and offering a wider and more vibrant variety of options, the consumer is at the forefront of all decisions.
https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2014/feb/19/startups-competition-james-caan
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 023
Pricing Strategy-Tomasz Tunguz:Partner at Redpoint Ventures
The 3 Pricing Strategies Your Startup Should Choose From
Startup's pricing strategies should be explicit. They should decide which strategy to pursue, and align sales, marketing, product and engineering efforts along those lines. Madhavan recommends polling your executive team to prioritize revenue growth, volume growth, profit generation, and market share to ensure the company's pricing strategy is consistent with the goals of the team.
https://www.inc.com/linkedin/tomasz-tunguz/only-3-pricing-strategies-your-startup-tomasz-tunguz.html
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 022
Tips to successfully deal with competitors
Remember everyone has competitors
There are a number of signals that warn potential investors. One of these is certainly when a startup CEO states: “We do not have any competitor. Nobody thought about this before, we are the first!” It’s clear that good ideas always imply the existence of competing projects and, at the same time, that a sound market is based on competition. The lack of competitors could, therefore, signal the lack of a true opportunity .
More often than not then, investors are more informed on the business than the startups themselves. This is a tricky situation for founders, who sometimes appear as little knowledgeable.
Try therefore not to say that your company has no competitors: this is indeed one of the worst warning signals for potential investors.
3. Always evaluate past and future competitors
When investors evaluate new opportunities, they do not only focus on the present situation. In the same way, founders of new companies need to consider past competitors (and why they failed) but also future rivals.
One example in this sense is that of startups which invested in AI or augmented reality without fully succeeding. Despite this, many projects focused on these technologies are being launched every day, and CEOs strongly believe in their potential. Although these could clearly succeed, potential investors need to know why it is different today and which conditions have changed.
In the same way it is important to determine possible future competitors, although this is certainly a more complex scenario.
https://talentgarden.org/uk/blog/startup-en-it-uk/8-tips-to-successfully-deal-with-competitors/
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 021
Entry Barriers can be a powerful tool
Educating Your Market
Startups that offer an alternative to existing competitors, or those breaking in with a brand new idea, many times are faced with the task of educating their market about their product or service.
This can take a great deal of time and money to accomplish, and it sometimes poses a very complicated barrier.
Access to Distribution Channels
The use of main distribution channels can be a significant barrier to entry. When these channels are either exclusive or expensive, it can greatly impede newcomers to a certain industry.
https://talkroute.com/8-barriers-to-entry-every-startup-should-know/
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 020
Todd Belveal, founder and CEO at Washlava, on Quora:
When you're building a startup, it can be tempting to worry about competitors--especially the big companies running your industry.
But you have to focus on what you can control: moving quickly and looking ahead. Why? Because worrying about competition is an unnecessary distraction and makes you paranoid for no good reason.
Think of Blockbuster. If you ask a kid today what Blockbuster is, you'll get a blank stare. But most of us remember their stores vividly. And we remember how fast they became empty storefronts when Netflix put them out of business.
Interestingly, Blockbuster had the internal capability and supply chain to compete with Netflix. For a short while, they had success attempting to innovate. But their real estate crushed them in the end. All of their stores were filled with DVDs--they couldn't unwind fast enough to free up the cash they needed to invest in other areas.
https://www.inc.com/quora/how-to-handle-your-startups-competition.html
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 019
All Startup’s have competition: Startup Survival Guide-Jayson Domble
Again, like I said pivot your business. Whenever you see something is working for some other venture in your niche market use that idea but innovate it and move foward.
I always tell my audience almost every time — I, bet they get tired of it but
“You all need to look at the social media network. Facebook would copy Snapchat stories and implant it to itself following Instagram and Whatsapp.”
Move with the crowd then, make your way to the front and lead them.
Going with the flow
When creating a startup I recommend for you to go with the flow but also have something special you bringing to the table because I would want to leave JayJay’s extra pepperoni’s pizza to go find the same exact pizza at Isabella’s Pizza
https://medium.com/swlh/all-startups-have-competition-startup-survival-guide-62097d9bc478
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 018
3 Tricks To Make Your Start Up Survive The Competition
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/289852
Offer what individuals need to purchase, not exactly what you need to offer
Time and again, individuals hop into a business worked around an item or administration they think will be fruitful, instead of one that is now demonstrated to have a market.
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 17
Re-energize your Customer Base
It’s always going to be true that your best customers are the ones you have. Figure out every way possible to make them even better customers. That probably starts with having a database of information about them – whether you deal with B2B purchasing agents or ordinary consumers – and using it to the hilt. Contact them about new products or with reminders that they’re on your mind (and, implicitly, not on your competitors’). Continually look for opportunities to cross sell or up-sell
The Startup Nation-The Sloan Brothers
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 16
Startup competition-Julian Shapiro
The anxiety of competition
Every startup idea I’ve had has been haunted by these concerns:
- What if the competition appropriates my entire business into a feature? (Facebook does this to a lot of startups.)
- If I don’t build my product/feature immediately, someone will before me, and I’ll have lost this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a head start on press and user adoption.
- What if my competitors' broad market saturation makes it so difficult to entice people to sign up for my product that customer acquisition costs will be unsustainable high?
- Your company is not unique. Never allow yourself to think that. You’re simply expanding a marketplace that numerous competitors partake in. Your competition is a living organism that will adapt just like you do; they will always exist in some form.
- Retention is king: Every day, fight to carve out a piece of the market that you can call home. A home is where users love to stay. Homes don’t grow fast because families (employees and users) don’t grow fast, but — crucially — healthy families never fade away. They persist throughout the ages.
- Brands cement retention: When you're part of someone's identity, it hurts to lose you.
https://www.julian.com/blog/startup-competition
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 15
Positioning Strategy for Startups
The first step in positioning a startup is to understand the four market types:
- A new product in an existing market
- A new product in a new market
- A new product attempting to resegment an existing marketing via low cost
- A new product attempting to resegment an existing market by creating a niche
The second step in positioning a startup is to understand the specific high-level positioning strategy for each market:
Source:http://www.marketingmo.com/strategic-planning/positioning-strategy-for-startups/
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 14
Ten ways to keep ahead of the competition
Know the competition
Find out who your competitors are, what they are offering and what their unique selling point (USP) is.
This will identify the areas you need to compete in, as well as giving you a platform for differentiating yourself.
www.marketingdonut.co.uk
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌ # 13
Top tips and advice for startup founders-Laurie Clarke
Being struck by a brilliant business idea can be hugely exciting; actually getting the idea off the ground - less so. Even startup founders with original and interesting business ideas can be tripped up by a range of pitfalls that means their project ends up derailed.
But how to fast track an idea from the incubation stage into a million dollar business? Techworld spoke to two seasoned entrepreneurs who have both worked with startup founders. Here are some of their best bits of advice.
https://www.techworld.com/startups/top-tips-advice-for-startup-founders-3682651/
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌
How the Cloud Is Helping Small Businesses Compete With the Big Guys
Technology not only disrupts--it also empowers.- Greg Satell
Yet cloud computing is now evening the playing field. Today, even the tiniest of enterprises can access nearly unlimited computing power on the cloud for an affordable price. Perhaps even more importantly, entire ecosystems of applications allow proprietors to build custom solutions for any scale or scope of activity. For small businesses, it is truly a new day.
https://www.inc.com/greg-satell/how-the-cloud-is-helping-small-businesses-compete-with-the-big-guys.html
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌
Here’s how small businesses can compete with big online businesses-Adam Lean -Founder of The CFO Project
So, how can your small business (with a small budget) compete with big businesses (with big budgets) online?
You just have to be better. But you have to be better strategically. Here’s how…
Do what the big guys can’t do.
https://medium.com/swlh/5-ways-small-businesses-can-compete-with-big-online-businesses-dd8e565bf1d
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌
Learn from new competitors✨✨✨
As your startup grows, chances are opportunists will take note and start entering your industry with similar offerings. The most successful entrepreneurs welcome new competition, and strive to continuously offer better products and services than any other company in the market.
As an entrepreneur, I’m always concerned if I don’t see competitors entering the space my startup is in. More often than not, it means that they know something about the industry that I don’t know.
http://fortune.com/2016/04/18/startups-entrepreneurs-success-competition/
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ ✌
Sidestep When Big Fish Invade
If a massive tech company “invades” the market in which your startup operates then you shouldn’t attempt to go toe-to-toe with such a giant business.
Whilst exceptions can be found, in most cases a small company that tries to directly compete with a mammoth venture will lose, bad.
As a small(er) startup, the smart thing to do when a major competitor enters your niche is to work hard to discover an appropriate sub-niche to which you can switch (at least part of) the focus of your company.
This is an example of pivoting.
https://www.appsterhq.com/blog/5-ways-startups-can-compete-big-boys/
Startup Tips for Competing✔✔ Understand your Target Audiences
There is a huge difference between the marketing budgets of SMEs and Startups compared to established Giants. These giants have access to infinite resources.
Therefore SMEs and Startups start disadvantaged. In fact, getting new customers; the essential ingredient for growth, seem to be one of the most difficult things for them to do.
Statistics reveal that 66% of Startups feel that this is the main reason they are destined to fail.
The target audience is one of the most important points a business needs to research and understand. Furthermore, you need to completely understand and accurately analyze your target audience. You need to know what type of audience would be using the products or services offered by your business.
For example; what would be their preferences, and etc. In conclusion, you need a well-defined target audience to reach your goals and make your dreams come true.
https://www.rizonesoft.com/startups-compete-big-competitors/
Startup Tips for Competing-Utilize Your Freedom
Strategies for startups looking to gain a leg up on the (big) competition.-Cathy Han, CEO of 42 Technologies
But as a startup, we had the ability to utilize lighter cost structures and price competitively. Because we are a full SaaS model, there's low capital expenditure to go with 42. Customers can sign up for a subscription and not pay millions up front for a long term contract. As a result, we were able to sign on large retailers and get them setup in a matter of weeks, instead of going through months of negotiation. There were fewer situations of "this is what we could do" and a lot more of iterating quickly and adapting to what's actually helpful for the customer.
https://www.inc.com
Startup Tips for Competing is an essential armor, as 90 % of businesses are based on existing ideas.The initial phase is vulnerable to fierce attacks as resources are limited.Once product -market fit is established a clear strategy on how to compete with fellow startups and big brothers needs attention.
You need not have apprehensions as some of the big names like Apple, Microsoft, Infosys etc have started small before they have become an icon. Nirma, Balaji Wafers and CavinKare are some of the Indian names which have given nightmares to established MNC.
One can study both large companies and startups who have grown in size to learn the tactics.
The common parameters are Consistent Quality, Price and Customer Service for both startups and small players.
Startups Tips for Competing- Series # 006 : Listen to what your clients want
Multimillion dollar companies rarely care what their clients want. As a startup, you should do just the opposite. All you have to do is listen to your client's problems and deliver solutions. Create and breed a client-centric ideology in your company. If you take a step towards fulfilling your client's needs by customising your products and services, they too will take a step in your direction.
Source:https://yourstory.com/2017/04/startups-can-beat-corporates/
Startups Tips for Competing- Series # 005-Establish Connections
Sometimes, knowing the right people is the key to the door of success.
When you’re a startup, you really need supporters, advisors, and above all, investors. For that reason, it is important to be open to new connections.
It happens often that we meet interesting people in the least expected situations. You never know if your future investor is the guy sitting in front of you on the train or the woman you helped find her way on the street in your city. The same goes for finding employees. Sometimes the best ones are those whom you’ve hired by accident.
https://www.timecamp.com/blog/2018/06/4-smart-ways-for-startup-to-compete-with-big-companies/
Startups Tips for Competing- Series # 004:Keep tabs on your competition
You shouldn’t copy the competition, but you shouldn’t disregard them either.
Focusing on your brand and your consumers is your top priority, but knowing what your rivals are doing will help you plot your next steps.
Are they offering a new innovation? Applying a new strategy? Will these work for you? These are questions you should be asking yourself.
You can’t get ahead of your competition if you have no idea what they’re doing.
As for your brand, being a startup may work to your advantage as big companies will probably not give you as much attention.
You can go ninja on them and take over their market share without them realizing.
Additionally, Global Resources notes that “there is plenty to learn from the successes and failures of a worthy adversary.”
https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/how-to-deal-with-competition-as-a-startup-business/
Startups Tips for Competing- Series # 003:Don’t be afraid to fail
Having experienced some success, you might be tempted to play it safe. After all, if customers seem to like the first iteration of your product or service, why bother changing things up too much?
I see fear of failure as one of the greatest barriers to long-term startup success. If you want to keep selling something that is truly better than anything else out there, you’ll need to take risks in making your offering better, faster, or cheaper. If there’s a significant shift in customer sentiment, you might even need to pivot to an entirely different product or service line. Be relentlessly focused on providing something of value, and constantly listening to customers’ needs.
Source;fortune.com
Startups Tips for Competing- Series # 002:Take Some Pre-emptive Steps
If it’s not too late, ward off competition from the start by raising the barriers to entry in your niche.
You might try to develop exclusive relationships with distributors of the hottest merchandise in your field, for example, which prevents competition from overlapping your product mix. Or issue a price guarantee that ensures your place is the last one a customer will visit before making a purchase decision.
The Sloan Brothers
Startups Tips for Competing- Series # 001-Find a niche
Some small businesses fail early on because they try to deliver too much.
Most smaller companies benefit from providing a niche products or services, focusing on the things they’re best at, and becoming experts in a certain field.
If your small business is having trouble competing with big firms, then it might be worth looking at whether you are spreading yourself too thin, and whether you’d benefit from carving out more of a niche.
Although it’s difficult for small firms to compete with the giants, especially in a difficult economy, it’s not impossible to run a successful small business.
Source:http://smallbusiness.co.uk
