You Are Your Biggest Competitor

Startups (and not only startups) very often lament about fierce competition and how they are being forced out of the market or how difficult it is to enter or play because of the competition.

Here is my take: look in the mirror. You will see your biggest competitor.

I mean, instead of looking around look at yourself. Look at your business. Instead of focusing how to outmaneuver the others, focus on your own speed, execution, efficiency, error rate, quality, customers. In most cases it is enough to just deliver what you've envisioned, to be the winner. Be flexible, be agile and focus instead of spreading wide and thin.

Confession: spreading wide is one of the errors I make most often. It is this greed, this thinking in the lines of "we can do that too... and that too...". STOP! Just because you can eat, do not try to eat everything that is on the table. Taste what you like the most and eat what you can digest. No more. Otherwise you will get sick. Or feel bad. Or your speed and agility will slow. I have to remind this myself very often.

iTunes have not killed the CD industry. The CD industry died because it was moving too slow and it did not accept the wave of change brought by the Internet and solid state memory. Dinosaurs were not killed by other predators. They did not adapt to the changing environment. Google did not kill Microsoft. Microsoft killed itself by not adapting to the post-PC era of multiple browser / mobile clients accessing cloud - based systems (I have not seen the numbers but I seriously doubt people are still buying rich-client versions of the Office suite).

Apple was successful with the first iPhone while it was only 2G. They could have been working for a year or so on a 3G version, but no, they decided to get the product out of the door before it could do everything. They cut down the feature considered the most important by many. They focused on what the customers really needed and admired. There were other 3G smartphones on the market when the first iPhone was launched. So what...?

Focus, agility, delivery. The three ingredients of a success. Find your niche and do not look around. Push, push, push to the finish line. Avoid the temptations. Don't blame those who overtake you. Blame yourself. Or better, do not let yourself to be overtaken. It is your under-performance, not their superiority.