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Don't agree with you about #2, if you really are intelligent, control the conversation and information flow. You should be able to gather more information about
by marcus 19y ago
Don't agree with you about #2, if you really are intelligent, control the conversation and information flow.
You should be able to gather more information about the business from your competitors than vice versa.
Especially when you are still in pre-launch mode and they don't know who you are. Talk to them as a customer/supplier/affiliate, it might be a bit underhanded but Sun-Tzu would approve, you'll be amazed at how much information you can get.
- pg 19y agoIt might be ok (strategically, if not ethically) to pump competitors for info by pretending not to be one, but that's not what he meant. Though indeed I'm not sure it would even be good strategically to do that sort of thing.
- marcus 19y agoOne of the main difficulties in building a successful startup is intimately understanding the needs of your clients, suppliers etc. Once you have clients of your own you obviously should interact with them continuously to get the data, but even the first iteration can be made much better & faster, by simply interacting with your competitors in various roles, and putting yourself in the shoes of your clients & suppliers.
- tx 19y agoWell... you're not alone. We had a couple of phone calls from "customers" who (we are 99% certain) were our competitors almost immediately after we launched. They weren't intelligent enough to "control the conversation and information flow" though :-) But it was nice to pause for a second and realize that two guys with some spare coding time had built something to make existing businesses a bit worried.