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What If Google Does It? - How To Think About And Crush Your Competition

28 points by jasonlbaptiste 15y ago

akg 15y ago
There are several other reasons regarding why startups win: * Startups usually have great hackers. Business is about people, and successful startups are started with or staffed with great developers who are exponentially more productive than the norm. PG explains this phenomena in his essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html * Startups also tend to be more focused, driven, agile, and create an environment conducive for productivity (no meetings, HR paperwork, etc.). * Startups also target the low-end market. To quote PG again, "it's easier to make an inexpensive product more powerful than to make a powerful product cheaper...if you build the simple, inexpensive option, you'll not only find it easier to sell at first, but you'll also be in the best position to conquer the rest of the market."
- dshah 15y ago
  One additional point: Just because a big company (like a Google or Facebook) gets into your market, it doesn't mean they'll stay in it. There's a fair amount of precedence that big companies jump into a particular category (thereby causing loss of sleep for some startups) and subsequently retracting. One example includes Facebook vs. Foursquare in the "check-in" space. And, Google has officially killed off a number of projects recently. One of the advantages that startups have is that they can remain focused on the customer problem. They don't have 100 other business units to fall-back on if one particular project doesn't work out.
  - akg 15y ago
    Exactly right. A startup's project is their bread and butter making them all the more inspired to do the best they can. Where as a Google can just write it off if it doesn't work out; they also probably won't have their best people working on a fringe/experimental project.
j_baker 15y ago
...but whatever you do, don't talk about "crushing" your competition, especially in public. This is a terrible idea from a legal perspective.
- schnaars 15y ago
  Do you have a precedent for this? Generally the lawyers are all about this.
tszming 15y ago
This is what Mark Zuckerberg said during the Startup School 2011 and I think it is so true. "I don’t pretend that I had any idea that I was doing. I always felt like we were so close to dying in the first years, and were afraid that Google was about to build our product and we were going to be screwed, and look how long it took for them to build our product,” he said laughing, referring to Google’s newly launched social product Google+. “You are going to make a ton of mistakes, you don’t get judged by that.” http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/30/facebooks-zuckerberg-if-i-were-starting-a-company-now-i-would-have-stayed-in-boston/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/30/facebooks-zuckerberg-if-i-w...

akg 15y ago

There are several other reasons regarding why startups win: * Startups usually have great hackers. Business is about people, and successful startups are started with or staffed with great developers who are exponentially more productive than the norm. PG explains this phenomena in his essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html * Startups also tend to be more focused, driven, agile, and create an environment conducive for productivity (no meetings, HR paperwork, etc.). * Startups also target the low-end market. To quote PG again, "it's easier to make an inexpensive product more powerful than to make a powerful product cheaper...if you build the simple, inexpensive option, you'll not only find it easier to sell at first, but you'll also be in the best position to conquer the rest of the market."

dshah 15y ago
One additional point: Just because a big company (like a Google or Facebook) gets into your market, it doesn't mean they'll stay in it. There's a fair amount of precedence that big companies jump into a particular category (thereby causing loss of sleep for some startups) and subsequently retracting. One example includes Facebook vs. Foursquare in the "check-in" space. And, Google has officially killed off a number of projects recently. One of the advantages that startups have is that they can remain focused on the customer problem. They don't have 100 other business units to fall-back on if one particular project doesn't work out.
- akg 15y ago
  Exactly right. A startup's project is their bread and butter making them all the more inspired to do the best they can. Where as a Google can just write it off if it doesn't work out; they also probably won't have their best people working on a fringe/experimental project.

j_baker 15y ago

...but whatever you do, don't talk about "crushing" your competition, especially in public. This is a terrible idea from a legal perspective.

schnaars 15y ago
Do you have a precedent for this? Generally the lawyers are all about this.

tszming 15y ago

This is what Mark Zuckerberg said during the Startup School 2011 and I think it is so true. "I don’t pretend that I had any idea that I was doing. I always felt like we were so close to dying in the first years, and were afraid that Google was about to build our product and we were going to be screwed, and look how long it took for them to build our product,” he said laughing, referring to Google’s newly launched social product Google+. “You are going to make a ton of mistakes, you don’t get judged by that.” http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/30/facebooks-zuckerberg-if-i-were-starting-a-company-now-i-would-have-stayed-in-boston/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/30/facebooks-zuckerberg-if-i-w...