StartupNorth

Tag: competition

  • Stop stressing about startup competitors

    CC-BY-NC-20 Some rights reserved by Dan T Townsend

    AttributionNoncommercial Some rights reserved by Dan T Townsend

    A couple weeks ago I tossed and turned for hours, unable to sleep because of a TechCrunch article announcing the launch of a potential competitor.  This happens once every month or two, and I’m sure everyone can relate..  This occasion was particularly annoying.  A friend forwarded the techcrunch article to me which I opened while settling into bed for the evening.  An hour of research on my iPhone later, I’m back downstairs coffee in hand, still doing research.

    The funny thing is that the logical part of me realizes that startups worrying about other startups is irrational.  But yet I can’t help myself from trying to find chinks in their armour and points of differentiation.

    The good news is that I’ve gotten good at waking up the next day and realizing that a startup worrying about another startup competitor is like a 2 year old worrying about another 2 year old making the deans list instead of them.

    It’s a war, not a battle, and chances are, both startups will evolve in a way that makes them no longer competitive.  Some will be competing for the deans list.  Some will be competing for the track team, but most will have dropped out.

    But still … in my last startup, I can’t tell you how many hours of sleep I lost mulling over Xobni, Dropbox, Threadsy, reMail, ClearContext and others.  With the exception of Dropbox and maybe Xobni, have you heard of these others?  Probably not.  In hindsight, they’re actually really good examples of why you shouldn’t worry that much about startup competitors.

    1.  They’re guessing … just like you

    We were scared of Xobni, largely because of their uber connected and super alented team.  Specifically Jeff Bonforte.  But everyone’s guessing in Startups.  Everyone.  Including Jeff.  Cofounders backgrounds, vanity metrics, and techcrunch articles mean nothing.  Xobni was iterating like crazy at the same time we were.  In the end, it looks like they might be acquired by Yahoo in a deal that doesn’t represent a huge win for investors.  Everyone’s guessing.

    2.  Some pivot

    Threadsy was building an all one one messaging system – combining facebook, twitter, email, etc.  We thought it was genius … so much so that we were doing the same thing.  Turns out Threadsy (like us) couldn’t make a business out of it, started building social graph analytics, and eventually were acquired by Facebook.  Most times your competitor won’t be building what they’re currently building in another 6 months.  Most times, you won’t either.

    3.  A lot die

    Most competitors will die before they hit product market fit.  A lot of times, that has nothing to do with the product and everything to do with cofounder squabbles, life getting in the way, bad investors, and the million and one other things that can go wrong.

    4.  Some acquired and stop innovating

    We thought reMail and Gabor Cselle were onto something.  They were former google / former YC, so easily intimidated us.  We were building something similar called All My Mail and had visions of making the iPhone’s mail app not suck  Google eventually acquired reMail but didn’t exactly use the technology to innovate and several years later, it’s mailbox that’s innovating the mobile mail experience.

    5.  Markets can support multiple players

    Dropbox scared us.  Former YC (again), great founding team, great investors.  But our product (and I’d bet a half dozen others) was ahead of theirs.  But we got scared and pivoted away.  In hindsight, that market is massive, able to support more than one player.  Box.net has obviously proven that..

    Competition in startups is an interesting thing.  It’s something we can’t help but stress about.  But it’s illogical.  Because in startups, there really are no Goliaths.  We’re all Davids, and the real fight that we have is with convincing users to change their existing habits.  Back in the day, our biggest competitor wasn’t dropbox.  It was email, and the people that used it to share documents, too lazy to change their habits.  That’s the case for most all startups.

  • Startup Marketing: Does the Competition Matter?

    Editor’s note: This is a guest post by serial entrepreneur and marketing executive April Dunford who is currently the head of Enterprise Market Strategy for Huawei. April specializes in brining new products to market including messaging, positioning, market strategy, go-to-market planning and lead generation. She is one of the leading B2B/enterprise marketers in the world and we’re really lucky to be able to share here content with you. Follow her on Twitter @aprildunford or RocketWatcher.com. This post was originally published in April 12, 2012 on RocketWatcher.com.

    CC-BY-20 Some rights reserved by Paolo Camera
    Attribution Some rights reserved by Paolo Camera

    I have heard people make the argument that startups shouldn’t think about their competitors. I agree that many spend too much time worrying about how their feature set stacks up against another offering’s feature set. On the other hand, prospects are evaluating your solution against alternatives (which may not be products) and communicating how you are better than those alternatives is a key part of great startup marketing. Simply put – you should care about competitive alternatives if your prospects do.

    Startups are not Big Companies

    I very rarely see useful competitive analysis done by startup marketers, mainly because they are trying to do it like big companies do it. The big companies I’ve worked for have had departments dedicated to creating large detailed check mark matrices that showed how our feature set compared to competitive offerings. These matrices almost never included any feedback from customers. Needless to say, the products and their markets were very mature.

    This approach completely falls apart within the context of a startup. Your competitors, from a customer point of view are almost never so easily defined. For startups, your offering is often competing with “do nothing”, “hire someone to do it”, use spreadsheets/documents/paper, or some other solution that might be completely unsuited to the task but is free/easy/what has always been used. Comparing features of one of these alternatives to your startup’s offering to makes absolutely no sense in this context.

    A More Customer-Centric Approach

    In the context of a startup the only competitive analysis that makes sense is the one that is happening in side the heads of your prospects. The more you understand about that, the more you can use that knowledge to improve your marketing.

    Instead of the traditional competitive comparison matrix, a more useful competitive alternatives snapshot for a startup would look at what customers perceive to be the major benefits of the alternative, what risks they see that might stop them from choosing your solution and how you might address these issues in your messaging.

    An Example

    Here’s an example for CRMster, a fictional solution aimed at mid-sized consulting businesses to help them manage their customer information. The points here are just to give you some ideas about how this might look:

    Competitive Alternative Benefit customers perceive Risk in selecting your offering Value of your offering Proof points
    Do nothing – we don’t use a CRM tool and that’s fine by us Free
    Zero effort required    		 Budget spent on this will mean less money for other thingsConsultants will have to learn the tool and record data they don’t today More accurately predict future workloads so you can budget/staff accordingly and increase your profitability.Gives consultants access to more complete customer information making it easier to do their jobs. 3rdparty data: Research shows companies using CRM are X% more profitable.Customer data: CRMster customers have x% average increase in revenue/profitabilityEnd user quote “CRMster makes collaborating easy. I want to marry it! ”Customer case studies
    Manage customer data in spreadsheets FreeEveryone knows how to use a spreadsheet Budget spent on this will mean less money for other thingsConsultants will have to learn the tool Eliminate the need to consolidate spreadsheets – a process that is time consuming and introduces errorsEasier, more effective team collaboration means projects are delivered on time, on budget. Customer quote: “Consolidating spreadheets was a pain and our data stank. CRMster lets us accurately forecast our business.”Customer quote: “CRMster got our teams working together better so we could deliver projects on budget”End user quote: “So fun to use I gave up playing Angry Birds at work!”Analyst opinion: “Folks using spreadsheets are big losers”
    Use CRMFree, a free CRM tool Free Budget spent on this will mean less money for other things Expert customer supportProvides features for consulting companies that generic CRM tools don’t have. Analyst data: X% of CRM deployments fail because end-users don’t get good support.Customer quote: “Their support is so great we send them chocolates on valentine’s day”Press quote: “If you are a consulting company you are an idiot if you buy anything else”Customer logos, case studies
    Use BigWig CRM, a CRM tool for mid-sized businesses of any type A safe bet: an established brand CRMster might go out of businessThe software might be unproven, buggy crap CRMster is way cheaper.Provides features for consulting companies that generic CRM tools don’t have. Pricing and guarantees.Screen shots, product demosTeam bios – emphasizing successes and background in this market.Investor profiles, investment announcementsCustomer logos, case studies

    For this example, only the last couple of rows get into any discussion of product features and even there those aren’t the only considerations. The other thing to notice is that the feature discussion can happen as part of a higher-level theme (we’re better because we are cheaper, more targeted to this market, or a more elegant solution) rather than a checklist of niggley esoteric features like you would for mature products in a mature market. If you are going head to head with an established player in the market you’re doing it because you have something radically different.

    The Output: Better Messaging

    The next step is to look at the themes and develop key messages that highlight your differentiated value while addressing the potential big concerns. I’ve written about messaginghere and here and I’ll talk more about how you would take the next step and construct messaging upcoming post.

    Editor’s note: This is a guest post by serial entrepreneur and marketing executive April Dunford who is currently the head of Enterprise Market Strategy for Huawei. April specializes in brining new products to market including messaging, positioning, market strategy, go-to-market planning and lead generation. She is one of the leading B2B/enterprise marketers in the world and we’re really lucky to be able to share here content with you. Follow her on Twitter @aprildunford or RocketWatcher.com. This post was originally published in April 12, 2012 on RocketWatcher.com.

  • 2011 CIX Top 20 Nominations

    CIX Top 20 ApplicationWe’ve written about the work that CIX is doing in building Canadian Technology Accelerator with ties to the US. They continue to build a showcase for Canadian startups in a variety of emerging fields. They have recently announced the nomination process for companies to the Top 20 competition for 2011.

    Robert Montgomery (LinkedIn), Mark Greenspan (LinkedIn, @markgreenspan) and the team at Achilles Media has been working hard to deliver value to the startups that participate in CIX. And we’re seeing a number of past winners have success, traction and exits. Cognovision, the 2009 winner, was acquired by Intel. The 2010 winners included:

    It’s a great opportunity to get access to some of the movers and shakers in digital media and ICT in Canada. And hey, the press coverage doesn’t hurt either. The 2010 short list of 20 companies included an impressive set of digital media and software (ICT in larger player lingo), including:

    Hopefully the entrants for the 2011 cohort will be just as impressive.  If you are a Canadian startup working in Digital Media or Technology and have less than Cdn$10MM in revenue, you should consider applying.

  • Startup Weekend Toronto

    Some rights reserved photo by Seattle Municipal Archives

    Startup Weekend Toronto, which kicks off June 3, is almost sold out; if you’re on the fence, don’t wait much longer, StartupNorth readers can save 20% by using discount code: STARTUPNORTHSW

    This June’s event will have a strong focus on lean startup principles. A fantastic set of speakers are lined up to provide practical advice so you can take what you learn well beyond the weekend itself. While there is no “right” way to start a company, Startup Weekend is here to help provide you with as many tools and connections as possible to help you succeed.

    A great set of speakers for Friday night will kick things off and prepare you for what’s ahead. Throughout the weekend there will be mentors dropping in helping teams with their projects. Saturday night, founders will share war stories. The judging panel includes experienced investors and entrepreneurs who you will have a chance to connect with. Startup Weekend  will round up with dinner and awards at an awesome venue to be announced shortly.

    The winner of Startup Weekend will enjoy more than just street cred, in addition there will be a cash award to help move the project forward, entry into the Ryerson DMZ for 4 months, video production to help on the marketing front, pro bono legal services, a chance to demo at the next Democamp Toronto (June 9), and more.

     

  • CIX 2010 Submission Deadline

    Canadian Innovation ExchangeThis is your friendly neighbourhood startup spider reminder that the Early Bird Tickets and Submissions to Canada’s Most Innovative Company competition are due tomorrow on October 1, 2010.The 2009 winner was CognoVision and we’ve written about the finalists in the past. The goal is to provide value to all of the finalists and submission. Canadian companies in ICT, Cleantech and Digital Media are encouraged to Submit Your Profile!

    How are companies chosen?

    Companies are evaluated by a selection committee agains 4 criteria. Basically it’s the same stab in the dark we all make when picking investments. One of the key criteria is traction, i.e., there are more mid-to-later stage companies. But it’s less about company age and more about state of corporate development. There’s a preference to companies that are able to demonstrate traction (think customers, intellectual property, partnerships, etc.).

    • Quality of Innovation
    • Market Potential / Viability
    • Management / Industry Experience
    • Competitive Positioning

    Who does the choosing?

    Check out the 2009 selection committee, they are some of the most respected folks in the Canadian VC, academic and business circles. The list includes folks like:

    The team at Achilles Media has been extremely receptive to entrepreneur and community feedback. They have made changes to the submission process, the ticketing for finalists, and continue to try to evolve the program and benefits for submitting companies to up the value. The realization is that media exposure is a small part of the benefit to the CIX Finalists. They are doing a great job to make CIX participation a valuable decision for Canadian companies. The best part, if you have an idea about what would make CIX more valuable to you, send it to the Achilles Media team they are open to making things better. Make sure you check out the 2010 program and think about an Early Bird ticket.

    The first step is to Submit Your Profile!

  • Russia learning from Silicon Valley

    While everyone in Quebec and Ontario were doing the shake-rattle-and-roll, the Silicon Valley establishment was playing host to Russia’s  President Medvedev.

    Apparently having your economy rely solely on exporting oil and mafia dons isn’yt considered sound economic policy so Medvedev got his buddy Ivan Danko to show him around the at likes of Twitter and Cisco.

    In case you’ve been living in Siberia and haven’t heard, Russia wants to build its own Silicon Valley from scratch in a town outside of Moscow. So we guess Medvedev was asking around for the “how to” manual.

    This reminded us of a brief discussion we had over at the C100 website a few weeks back. You can check out the comments over there, but we’ve also reposted here to continue to spur a bit of debate…

    Does Canada need its own Silicon Valley?

    Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 03:37AM

    OK, I’m going to pull the pin and lob a rhetorical grenade to get a discussion going…

    Have you head of Skolkovo, Russia? No? Apparently it is somewhere near Moscow and is the future home of Russia’s Silicon Valley. What? You don’t believe it? Well some US investors sure do, to the tune of $250 million. And this isn’t the only government backed innovation center that is being built from the ground up. There may be a Silicon Valley being built up in Russia but the Dubai has its sites firmly set to be the 21stSilicon Oasis. Century’s

    Both these locations have or are attracting talented engineers. Both of these locations have or are attracting massive amounts of capital.

    And they aren’t the only two countries that are trying to build their own flavor of Silicon Valley. There are probably a dozen similar projects in a dozen countries around the world. But one country that isn’t embarking on its own Silicon Valley master plan is Canada.

    If a US PE can come up with  250 million reasons why Russia will successfully build the next hub of innovation, surely Canada, with its improving investment climate and its refreshing lack of mafia domination could convince investors to put some green in the Great White North.

    Is Canada missing the boat? Does it need to create a chilly Silicon Valley somewhere near Alert in order to compete in the global high-tech market?

    Discuss…..

  • Up-Start Competition 2009

    Update from Tony Redpath at MaRS:

    “An important correction – the actual competition runs from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM on the 29th, with the class party starting at 5:00 PM and running to 7:00 PM. (12 pitches x 15 minutes = 3 hours, hence the 2 – 5). Anyone can attend to watch the pitches – but they will have to sign an NDA at the door since many entrants will have to disclose confidential ideas in order to make their pitch. The party is wide open however …and the winner of the competition will be announced, a large cheque handed out etc. I will have non-confidential summaries of each pitch available for interested parties, and they can buttonhole any team that interests them. We’ve got a great crop this year.”

    CIBC_Ent101-250px The MaRS Entrepreneurship 101 is coming to a close for the 2009 season. The season ending wrap party, aka Up-Start Competition, is happening on April 29, 2009 from 5:00-7:00pm at MaRS. Twelve (12) companies will be pitching a 10 minute presentation followed by 5 minutes of questions to a panel of three judges. Unfortunately, the judges are not currently listed on the site. However, a quick assumption is that it is probably someone from MaRS Venture Group (Tony Redpath or Peter Evans), a successful past entrepreneur and a local venture investment professional.

    The twelve entrants selected from the executive summary stage each give a 10-minute presentation, with a further five minutes for questions, to a panel of three judges on a day in late April (date to be confirmed). Presentations will be made under cover of a non-disclosure agreement that all audience members will be required to sign. The judges will pick the winner on that day and the first prize of $10K will be awarded. (Note that the prize will be paid out against an approved expenditure program that advances the business upon which the pitch was based.)

    All of the presentations will be judged against the following criteria:

    • Has the summary/presentation clearly articulated the value proposition?
    • Has the summary/presentation demonstrated competitive differentiation/intellectual capital?
    • Has the summary/presentation demonstrated a business model that makes money?
    • Has the summary/presentation demonstrated market awareness?
    • How effective was the overall presentation?
    • Would you invest?

    Should be a great night of pitches from the Entrepreneurship 101 class. See you there.

    What: Up-Start Competition 2009
    The Up-Start Competition is a business pitch competition open to participants enrolled in CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101. Individuals, or teams of individuals, have to give a ten minute presentation on an idea for a technology based business that they wish to implement (or, if appropriate, for a business that they have already started). They are expected to apply the concepts that they have learned from the course to their business idea, and to make a compelling case that this will lead to a very successful business.
    When: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
    Where: MaRS

    101 College St
    Toronto, ON   Canada

  • New Ventures BC Competition is now open

    new ventures bc competitionNew Ventures BC is a competition for BC startups that has been running since 2003. The competition is open to new companies that have “not yet secured significant financing from “outside investors” (ie. investors other than friends, family, and company founders)”. The competition costs $100 to enter and is open to B.C.-based privately held companies (full eligibility requirements).

    Registration for the 2009 New Ventures BC Competition is now open! Competition deadline is April 20th, 11:59pm.

    REGISTER NOW

    The new 2009 prize structure includes:

    • $120,000 British Columbia Innovation Council First-prize package
    • $63,000 British Columbia Innovation Council Second-prize package
    • $37,000 British Columbia Innovation Council Third-prize package
    • BC Hydro Sustainability $40,000 prize
    • BC Bioenergy Network $20,000 prize
    • British Columbia Innovation Council Economic Impact $20,000 prize

    If you’re an early-stage entrepreneur with a new technology business idea, join us!

    For details and to register for the competition, visit http://www.newventuresbc.com or call 604-725-5740.

    Competition deadline is April 20th.

    The questions and evaluation criteria are very interesting set of metrics for any startup looking to raise money. The questions are not all encompassing, but they are an extremely complete list of the types of discussion that is required during the initial fund raising. Check out Round 2: Feasability Test and Round 3: Venture Plan of the Contest Rules for details about what your business plan should cover.

    1. Product/Service: Describe your product or service and the nature of the technology.
    2. Technology Development: Describe the development stage of your product/service.
    3. Team: Describe your company’s strengths and weaknesses. List the credentials of your technical and management teams, and if applicable, advisors and board of directors. If you don’t have a team, describe the key positions and critical skill sets that you need to add.
    4. Business Plan Status: What research has been conducted, what remains to be done, and how and when you anticipate doing so. What key sources are included to document and support your plan?

  • OCE Elevator Pitch contest at Discovery 09

    discovery2009_logo The Ontario Centres for Excellence is hosting an Elevator Pitch contest on May 12, 2009 at Discovery 09 event. First place prize is Cdn$5000 and second place is Cdn$2000. Not shabby for a 700 word entry.

    Step into OCE’s Elevator Pitch contest – 12 May 2009
    Metro Convention Centre, Toronto

    Venture capitalists and angel investors can spot a good business pitch in roughly the time it takes to ride an elevator. Test your pitch by getting in on the Elevator Pitch at Discovery 09. Go one-on-one, face-to-face with leading VCs and angel investors and deliver a compelling overview of your tech-based business idea in five minutes or less. Capture their attention, advice, and a chance to win cash prizes for best pitch.

    To enter, visit www.ocediscovery.com/elevatorpitch2009.aspx.

    Startups need to submit a 700 word maximum submission that covers the following:

    • Describe the product or service and its underlying technology
    • What is the market need – what is the value proposition to your intended customers?
    • What is the sustainable competitive advantage of your product or service?
    • Describe the market and market size.
    • What is your market entry strategy?

    Submissions are due by April 16, 2009.