Startups: Your Biggest Competitor May Not Be Another Startup
One discussion that comes up quite regularly when I work with startup teams is about competition.
Someone usually says, “We don’t really have any competitors.”
That’s when the conversation becomes interesting. Because if customers have the problem you’re trying to solve, they are almost certainly doing something today.
Maybe it is an Excel sheet.
Maybe it is a WhatsApp group.
Maybe it is a phone call.
Maybe it is an intern who spends three hours putting together a report.
Or maybe they have simply accepted the problem as a part of life.
Whatever it is, that is how they are getting the job done today.
I think many early-stage founders spend a lot of time looking for companies that offer a similar product. Sometimes they don’t find any. And they conclude that they have no competition.
But over the years, I have found that the biggest competitor is often not another startup or another product. It is the customer’s current way of doing things. It is the process they have become comfortable with. It is the workaround they have developed over time.
Sometimes, it is simply the belief that “what we have works well enough.”
And that is usually much harder to compete against than another company. Because asking someone to change a habit or an established way of working is rarely easy.
So I often ask a different question.
“If your startup didn’t exist, how would your customer get this job done tomorrow morning?”
That question almost always changes the discussion.
The focus shifts away from the product……and towards understanding the customer’s reality.
In my experience, startups don’t just compete with other products. They compete with habits. They compete with existing workflows. They compete with inertia. And unless we understand those, it becomes very difficult to convince customers to do something different.
Perhaps before asking, “Who are our competitors?” we should spend a little more time asking, “How is the customer getting this job done today, and why?”
