How do startups deal with the pressure of competing startups doing similiar, if not exact same, things?
What about when a startup is competing against a similar service offered by existing web services?
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By understand your users better. My experience: startups don't kill each other. They commit suicide. If you pick the right market size, usually there are enough rooms for few startups. Don't get too caught up with competitors. Care about the market instead. |
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Specialisation and Differentiation. To determine what to do you need to analyse your clients desires - why did they pick you over another provider of the same service? What features do you offer that they can't get at another provider? Being a startup you need to forget about pricing comparisons (if you offer a service for free when others charge for it - that's a very simple reason to switch providers, it only works in the long term if you can maintain the free status). Do a serious analysis of what features people are using that are not available on your competitors site and concentrate on those. Preferably start charging for those features and measure your conversion rate (how many people go from the free service to the paid service - that gives you a good indication of the 'real' value that people place on the features). At the end of the day you need to make a business decision - if those features are costing you money rather than making you money there is no way you can continue providing them over the long term regardless of how much your clients love them - either reduce the cost of providing those features or increase the price to your client. |
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