My Startup is not a competitor of...

So many times i hear "No we are not competing with X"

Most of the time i don't know whether this is true or not

So i always ask the same simple question to the company

"If you were a target user would you use both services? (yours and the no-competitor)"

if the answer is yes and you properly justify then you have a point.

if not think again

Comments

[Henrick]

Hello!
As far as Blogdimension, the Web 2.0 Search Engine, is concerned your question is very relevant. We position ourselves as an alternative search engine! We prone a multipolar Internet search world, a pacific coexistence in this search universe ;-) Maybe we are naive but we guess we have an original positionning.

Our opinion is that the users are becoming mature and are now ready to use several search engines and compare results. This validates the long tail theory... We'll see.

Thanks for your article!
All the best!

[Laurent Kretz]

It's always difficult, when you're deep in your project for a long time, to take the necessary distance to get the big picture and understand that your service, "brand new and first comer", is actually just millimeters from the competitors - which you think are not.

Your question is good, and straight on.

[Dennis Howlett]

Ouriel - this doesn't make sense to me. To say you're not competing with X or Y and then to say you'd use both implies X & Y are competitors. Doesn't it?

[Jib]

Hello Ouriel.

That is so important !
We really thought we were first on your type of service with UpShot until we saw ConceptShare a few days ago...
But having tried this one, there is a real huge gap between there app and ours. They made something wonderful, ultra graphical, full flash (it's almost like Photoshop in fact) whereas we made our service we simplicity and efficiency in mind. And standard customers will love that much than having to learn for 3 days how to annotate the content !

[Ouriel]

this is not as black or white. But at the end of the day if a user has to make a trade off between 2 services that solve the same problem then i guess you can conclude you are competiting with this company.

It is all about how the end user perceive your service vs another

[Ouriel]

Jib, i am not asking whether you are better than your supposed competitor. just asking whether consumers will perceive you as a solution to a same problem. if so then you can be sure they will have to make a choice if they know both.

[Lior]

What you raise here is a valid point. I'm not always sure why some people are afraid to classify others as direct competition. From past experience I can say that in 99.99% of the cases if you're TOTALLY alone, no one is even close to what you do and you break a new way in every aspect of what you do - there's a good chance you either didn't look close enough or you're on the wrong path. Competition means danger but also means opportunity.

Good luck to all! :)

[Jib]

Ouriel, I'm not at all saying that our product is better. Just that the 2 are really different. And as we are competitors the differences will actually make people choose.

But it's clear that it's definitly important to be aware of everyone working on the same market share.

[Yaron Galai]

Great post Ouriel (you got 5-stars from me...)

I completely agree with you. In most cases, especially with services companies (like web companies), competition is who the customers view as competition. We, the entrepreneurs that are deep in the nuts&bolts of the product, tend to think that the technology is the differentiator from other competitors. It's not.

This reminded me of a post I wrote a while back titled 'What business are you in?':
http://www.webx0.com/2006/11/what_business_a.html

[Henrick]

Hello!
I had additional thoughts about Ouriel's question. I think we should all intriduce a notion of time, space and psychology (the current "mood" of the user) into that question.

See for example the automotive industry. You have many brands competing on the same market. Customers have the choice to buy always the same brand or to change (to "churn"). Sometimes there are several brands of cars in the same family! Some have a professional car and a private car. There are many situations.

So I guess it could be the same in IT industry. One can use several similar services provided they have some differentiators. "Same but different" seems to be a valid response ;-) Especially true in the Search Engine universe! It's the way we feel it at www.blogdimension.com

Have a nice day.