Thread by @briannekimmel

Thread: Your startup can’t afford to ignore the competition.

100 million startups are launched every year.
That’s 3 startups per second. How are you going to compete?

You need a systematic way to outsmart your competitors —

Too often startups focus on product alone and forget about the importance of a well planned and executed GTM. Products are easy to build and deploy, which means anything that’s working will ultimately get copied.

Low-end competitors will cherry pick key features and launch light-weight versions of your product. In this case, you cannot compete on price or feature set alone.

B2B products ultimately compete with suites. File storage is a great example of this. Suites still win the CIO vote for company-wide usage. In this case, you're fighting to "land" within an organization and "expand" for more seats and additional departments.

Consumer platforms can easily copy, and ultimately kill, good consumer products. While the majority of these copycats are experimental in nature, the launch of Instagram Stories proves platforms have a massive distribution advantage.

In today's competitive environment, startups need a systematic way to identify unique advantages & move faster than the competition.

I've adapted the OODA Loop, a military framework where agility beats raw horsepower, to help startups w/ their GTM.

Here's how to apply it —

Observe: Use market intel & data to thoroughly understand the competitive landscape & accurately size your initial entry plan.

Example: Use technograhic data to understand how a company works based on the technology that they use and identify gaps in broader tech landscape.

Orient: Identify your team's unique advantages based on market demands.
Do you have credibility with a specific vertical or customer segment?
Does your team have a unique hiring advantage?
Do you have access to strategic partners or leading experts?

Decide: Determine your initial entry strategy including pricing, packaging and distribution channels

@vkhosla said this well: “your market entry strategy is often different from your market disruption strategy.” Start where you find a gap in the market & push your way through."

Act: Execute your agreed market entry strategy and begin exploring expansion opportunities in parallel

1. Identify new channels for distribution
2. Test new customer segments through strategic partnerships
Ex: Birchbox mass-market entry via Walgreens partnership (11 locations)

For a more in-depth look at how to outsmart your competition.
Read my @reforge post: "How to Grow By Stealing Market Share"
reforge.com/blog/competiti…