How Do You Compete with a Company Doing the Same Thing as You?
The short answer is you never should. You should slightly adjust your business model or target market to be differentiated. Read this article to learn how.
A startup should never really have a direct competitor. Its target market, where it can do something that others cannot, must be unique at the start to establish a beachhead in a niche. You need to target another niche market (often an intersection and application and industry sector) where you have a Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA).
Sometimes geography can be this difference if a service is delivered locally, or you are going after a country where a new service does not yet exist (i.e. Starbucks). However, this is less powerful than proprietary product and service capabilities that others do not have long-term. You could be attacked locally at any time, even by ex-employees you trained who leave. It is also possible and better to layer in other SCAs over time. First to market can give you advantages like...
Do good employees make good managers?
Sure, but only a certain percentage. Usually 5% to 15%. These are the ones willing to work hard, develop themselves, learn more rapidly and develop EQ and people skills. Google The Peter Principle to understand better.
Management is an art, not a skill. An art requires vast experience, and literally rewires your brain neuroplasticity over the years. See Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink. You cannot learn it in school. Only practice it for many years to hone your talents there.
The fact is, most people are lazy and do not want to continue to develop, think for themselves and excel. Only that do should be allowed in management. This is called “Self-Actualized”.
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Bob Norton is a long-time Serial Entrepreneur and CEO with four exits that returned over $1 billion to investors. He has trained, coached and advised over 1,000 CEOs since 2002. And is Founder of The CEO Boot Camp™ and Entrepreneurship...
How do I make sure that Google doesn't copy our startup idea?
This is sort of like asking, “How do I create a masterpiece of art?”. The answer is so complex it involves years, maybe decades for most, of experience in strategy, product development, intellectual property, operational excellence and more.
Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage, which is the only thing that drives higher exit values, is art. And involves many disciplines. I created a web page titled The Entrepreneur's Journey which lays out the 25+ skills, and arts really, that are required to build a valuable company that can grow rapidly and provide a strong exit for investors here: The Entrepreneur's Journey
If you ask this question, you are far from ready and need to dedicate years more to study and learning. I suggest you check out The CEO & Entrepreneur Boot Camp here: Home Page, begin reading a few books a month and plan to develop strategies and management skills first.
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Bob Norton...
What are the reasons why start-ups fail within first five years?
I wrote a free eBook answering this exact question in 2020: The Top Reasons Start Up Fail and How to Avoid Them. You can get that here.
Starting a new company is a big risk that requires many skills. Being a Founder of a startup is likely one of the most complex jobs there is today. People greatly underestimate what it takes to be successful. It takes at least 10 and more likely 15+ years to accumulate the experience needed for a high chance of success.
Here is a list of the skills we teach at The CEO & Entrepreneur Boot Camp:
1. Recruiting - Easy to do, hard to do well as quality of the team will be the #1 reason for success or failure. How do you know the right people?
2. Management - An art that only comes from experience. This will set the tone of your culture and its productivity and sustainability.
3. Marketing & Branding - Another art few understand well. Get professionals involved early, as brand and...
What are the Few Things Every Startup Needs?
Yikes. You are getting some bad answers here. In fact, some don’t even seem to know what a startup is really. Below is a link to a free video series I authored called The Entrepreneur's Journey, and it maps out almost everything a startup needs, mostly the stuff they don’t know they need.
However, let’s start with that definition of the word startup. A startup is not copying someone else's business model, freelancing or opening a dry cleaner. It is doing something new and different. Combining resources uniquely to create value for customers. In fact, if you are not doing something new and different (differentiated) you will never, ever attract either capital or quality senior people. This is called “Innovation”. And without it you have no startup. If you did not know that you are not ready to found a startup company yet and should stick to some simple service business while you learn the list of skills below.
A startup has a UNIQUE business model,...
The First 100 Days of Starting a Company
Most people that start companies have no clue how hard it will be to climb the mountain of corporate success. Almost no one has the skills needed when they first start. They are learned along the way and always have a price. The ones that survive are the tenacious, the creative and the smart that rapidly adapt to the feedback from the market and zero in on a product-market fit that is compelling. As well as messaging that makes for successful marketing. This can take many months, or even many years. However, the way to...
