Home What Advantages Does Your Startup Really Have?

What Advantages Does Your Startup Really Have?

When describing some of the common mistakes he’d seen in recent pitches for the incubator Capital Factory, Smart Bear Software founder Jason Cohen listed “invalid unfair advantages” as something that many startups needlessly tout. These include having a certain feature, having a team full of PhDs, being passionate and hard-working, and having strong SEO skills.

Today, Cohen wrote a post describing “unfair advantages” that actually do make a difference. Unlike the “invalid” advantages, these “unfair” ones are not easily copied. While your competitor can add the same features as you or hire more PhDs and SEO gurus, the things that give you a substantive advantage are not as readily attainable. “The only real competitive advantage is that which cannot be copied and cannot be bought,” writes Cohen.

Cohen lists the following as real advantages:

1. Insider information: Although the phrase is linked to the illegalities of Wall Street insider trading, there are obviously many (legal) ways in which having deep and intimate knowledge of an industry, along with an understanding of what the “specific pain points” within that industry can boost your advantages.

2. Single-minded, uncompromising obsession with One Thing: Cohen points to Apple’s obsession with design, Google’s obsession with search, 37signals’ obsession with simplicity as examples. “To remain un-copyable,” he contends, “your One Thing needs to be not just central to your existence, but also difficult to achieve. Google’s algorithm, combined with the hardware and software to implement a search of trillions of websites in 0.2 seconds, is hard to replicate; it took hundreds (thousands?) of really smart people at Microsoft and Yahoo years to catch up.”

3. Personal authority: Akin perhaps to having insider information, personal authority is more than having expertise in a particular field. It’s about being recognized as a leader, and while it takes both time and effort to develop, the advantage is gives is almost unrivaled.

4. The Dream Team: Having a Dream Team doesn’t guarantee success, but for a startup, having well-established, well-networked, reputable players on board can help mitigate some of the risks associated with startups. (The disadvantage to the Dream Team advantage, of course, is that members can always be hired away.)

5. (The right) Celebrity endorsement: Cohen doesn’t mean here that it’s important to shell out big marketing bucks to have sports celebrities or rockstars endorse your product. Rather, he means having celebrities within the tech community – well-known investors or CEOs, for example – announce their support for or promote the use of your service.

6. Existing customers: Cohen argues that every customer – even those who only took the trial offering, but abandoned your product – can offer insights and information that will be invaluable to you. Researching customers will help you continue to innovate and stay ahead of the competition.

Don’t despair if you don’t have an unfair advantage, Cohen concludes, admitting it took him time to develop these advantages for his own company.

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