

Strategies to Take on an Established Competitor - collistaeed
http://thenetsetter.com/blog/strategy/6-strategies-to-take-on-an-established-competitor/

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markessien
This post is giving bad advice. It sounds like good advice, but it's bad
advice. Let's say I'm looking to buy an FTP client. What do I do? I'll search
for FTP client on google, take a look at the first 5 clients, download and
install the ones that look interesting and have about the same feature set,
then buy the one that is easiest to use/and or cheaper.

New customers coming into a market do not have preconceptions about who is the
biggest or the best! That's the fundamental flaw in the argument.

The correct way to take on an established product is:

1\. Offer all their features

2\. Make sure you are visible on the same locations as they are

3\. Offer more value for the money

4\. Be more convenient and or easy to use

~~~
nreece

      1. Offer all their features
    

On the contrary, I think the initial approach should be simpler than that -
underdo your competition -
<http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Build_Less.php>

~~~
markessien
Give 5 examples where this has worked (also with less marketing).

~~~
nreece
Sure, I can give you many examples. Here are some of them:

Google Search - At a time when Web search (portals) was dominated by the likes
of Altavista, Excite, Yahoo etc., Google focused only on the search side of
things. A minimal homepage, no groups/usenet, no frills. Just better search.

Twitter - They focused on short messaging (status updates). Unlike Facebook
(who also offer status updates), they have no photo albums, no groups, no
advanced privacy controls. Just simple messaging in 140 chars.

Vimeo - They focused on online videos. YouTube already dominates this space.
Vimeo on the other hand kept it simple - allowing only videos created by the
users - user generated visual content. No 3rd party videos, no copyrighted
content. Just original creative work.

Campaign Monitor - They are a great example of a slick yet simple service. No
fancy marketing bullshit. Pure simple email newsletter delivery with only the
necessary tracking tools and highly customizable newsletter designing
templates. Pay as you go, no monthly fees. Send newsletters to 5, or 100,000
people.

GitHub - Source control and code repository is nothing new, but GitHub offers
just what's needed. Nothing more, nothing less.

iPod Shuffle - Music on the move? Been there, done that. No radio, no fancy
controls, no digital display. Under $50.

Posterous - Blogging started a new wave of online expression and information
sharing. How about a dead simple place to post everything, through email. No
fancy admin panel, no hassles with updates and templating.

Feedity ( _shameless plug_ ) - Create instant RSS feeds, for pretty much any
public webpage. No filtering, no fancy UI (pipes!), no signup required. Today,
four of our paying customers are state government offices.

All these products/startups are notable and profitable (ok, except Twitter,
but they are not far from it). What do they have in common? In my opinion,
they started by offering less. And, less is more.

Marketing is a different, and unrelated (to this discussion), topic
altogether. My viewpoint is to keep the feature-set simple.

~~~
markessien
None of the products you mention took over the market, they just addressed a
different market. Only google took over the market, but they did that by
differentiation of the core product, not by stripping down anything out of
search.

~~~
nreece
Starting up a business is not about taking over the market. It's about making
profits to sustain and grow. You can't learn to walk, until you learn to
crawl.

------
swombat
This article is really good and the advice in it is excellent - and the font
size is brilliant too :-)

The only wtf is the fact that the author thinks social news is dominated by
digg, when in my view it's roughly split between digg and reddit (but maybe
I'm wrong). Still, if HN gets a mention, reddit should too, really.

Excellent article nevertheless.

~~~
run4yourlives
Last graph I saw, digg was miles ahead of reddit, so I don't think it's that
far off.

Also, agreed with not just the font but the whole site - one of the prettiest
I've seen in a while.

~~~
swombat
Digg is partly there because it cheats on its metrics. Every upvote counts as
another visit.

In terms of actual traffic, last time I was dugg and reddited digg was only
slightly ahead of reddit.

------
JayNeely
A related article I'd like to see is how to take the lead in a divided market.
My (unlaunched, in progress) startup is in a space where there are a three or
four competitors with a large customer base, and a dozen or so others with
significant ones. They're almost all offering the same (aged) feature set. But
it's not like the service has become commoditized the way basic web hosting
has.

I feel like we're going to have strong differentiators, and a much easier time
getting adoption from the slice of the market not already using one of our
competitors. But what's the best way for us to get all the people who have
sunk their money and time into a competitor's service (and its learning
curve)?

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callmeed
Great article. I actually asked a similar question here a while back
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=345651>).

Nice job ...

On a side note, my only complaint is your analysis of iStockPhoto's quality
compared to expensive stock players. IMO, most microstock (while _good enough_
for many people's needs) isn't on par with professionally produced stock
photography and many people can see a difference. Plus, if you say that in a
room of professional photogs, you're likely to get a beat down :)

------
nreece
I wonder how the strategy will change if I were to take on not just an
established competitor, but a market leader, say Facebook or SAP ERP.

