Experience from 4 start-up companies: What about big companies?

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Coping with 1: the choice of entrepreneurial direction is important

Lu Yi, vice President, Shanghai Fu Jie Information Technology Co., Ltd.

For entrepreneurs, the question of how to deal with big companies should be made clear before they decide to start a business. Experienced entrepreneurs are sure to do SWOT analysis (corporate strategy analysis) before deciding to start a business, to think about how to deal with potential rivals, including competition from big companies.

Typically, large companies have advantages in terms of resources and branding, while start-ups have an advantage in decision-making speed and efficient execution capabilities. If startups can take advantage of their strengths to make up for the weaknesses of their resources and brands, startups will have the opportunity to beat big companies.

This is a good idea, but it's hard to do because big companies have the absolute advantage of resources and brands, making it hard for startups to compete with their own strengths. At this point, the choice of entrepreneurial direction is very important to make big companies do not want to copy, or to make its resources and brand advantage is not easy to play out.

How can big companies not be willing to copy? It's easy to pick a smaller target market, because the size of the target market determines how strong the competitor will be. For the Internet industry, if your target audience is billions, even if a big company doesn't notice it at first, you will find it and become your competitor one day. Conversely, if your target user is only millions of, the other party often feels that the market is too small to be worth the effort. There are a lot of startups that choose to do gadgets that serve specific customers, and the profits are good. But these big profit companies don't look, so they don't want to get involved.

Of course, most startups want to make products with a large number of target customers. At this point, you should choose those products that make big companies not easy to play in terms of resources and brands. Some mobile applications fall into this category. For most mobile applications, it takes only 5-6 people to make an app. and large companies can not simply increase the staff input to speed up the development of the way. Sometimes put too much technical staff, may be due to the internal communication costs are too high, resulting in slow product development. In addition, some mobile applications are spread through word-of-mouth and may accumulate millions other active users within a few weeks. Large companies, even if they have a lot of marketing costs, are "not strong enough". From this example, large companies in terms of resources and brand advantages of different products "lethality" is different.

Coping 2: Accumulating your own advantages is the key

Author Li, chief architect of Ning Software Technology Co., Ltd.

The initial accumulation advantage of starting a business

Entrepreneurs in the creation of products, should do more thinking and planning, will be able to prepare and layout of the resources are put into place. For example, product production cycle, promotion plan, according to the market response to a number of sets of response measures, some products can also apply for patents, product copyrights. You can also do some in-depth needs research in advance, really understand what users need. Because the initial use of the start-up company resources are not sufficient, so more to be prepared, so that after the product development and promotion work less detours. And it is at this stage that start-up companies will not be distracted by product movement and market response, focus on product building time is the most, so you should make good use of this phase of the time to open up the gap with large companies, forming some kind of barrier or advantage, so that their plagiarism will never keep up with your changes.

Faith is more important than gold

Products are copied by large companies should be a recognition of the product and the market itself, the start-up companies should redouble their efforts to move along the current goal. When you beat a big company, it may be the time when the company succeeds. Big companies have complex organizational structures, and decision makers need to take a holistic view of the company, so the product manager or project manager that competes with you may not have more resources than you, and there is less sense of ownership of the company and the product as you do. Their development process may be more normative, more rigorous, but also more time-consuming, and each time they make a decision, each time they make a change, they need to be able to cash in. The entrepreneur company can do small, fast, spirit and stability, quasi, ruthless. So entrepreneurs face plagiarism should not be decadent, confidence is more important than gold.

Core competitiveness is the key

In the early stage of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs should define the company's core competitiveness, the core competitiveness should never be an idea or material resources, these are too easy to replicate, preferably not a relationship. The core competitiveness can be a group of young people with ideals, can be desperate, can be the pursuit of the ultimate user experience of the faith, can be a constant innovation of creativity, can also be extremely high-end, short-term cannot replicate a core technology. Entrepreneurs should firmly grasp these entrepreneurship should be defined as a good core competitiveness, to constantly strengthen their own, the company has a taste of governance, the product to create exquisite and features, many for the customer to do some personalized functions and services, grasp some of the core customers.

to seek cooperation.

When the entrepreneur discovers the behavior of the big company really "messes up" the market, lets oneself very passive, seeks the cooperation also to be OK. The cooperation here is a broad term. Entrepreneurs can try to find another big company to see if they are interested in acquiring their own products, or to use the platform of large companies for more effective publicity, or to negotiate with their opponents, so that the positioning of their products is different. In addition, some good ideas of big companies, entrepreneurs can also be copied. If the market is big enough, the situation of cooperation, coexistence and harmony is not an acceptable result of entrepreneurs.

Shopping malls such as battlefield, but not necessarily to fight a life-and-death, large companies also have their own interests, more use of some of the resources of large companies actively seek cooperation, but also a good way or even strategy.

The success of Twitter and Facebook undoubtedly confirms the idea that good ideas can sometimes be more important than technology. And once the company's good products to get a certain market response, it is difficult to get rid of the fate of large companies by peer plagiarism. At this point, how to deal with the company's plagiarism, become a hot topic of concern.

Answer 3: Have the product that lets the user choose is kingly

Wang Xueqiang, president of Nanjing Kai du Information Technology Co., Ltd.

The mall is a battlefield. When the same product or service, in the fight for specific market users, may indeed be more "bloody." But no matter how well-intentioned you are, you cannot change the truth that the user is God and has the final choice. The ultimate winner and the winner of this kind of war is God, not you and me. So the most important mentality of the mall war is: do we have the product or service that the user ultimately wants to choose?

The market seems fair and open, but the market also has a monopoly of people, in which case big companies have more say than startups. The so-called fear of product or model leakage, by large companies to use the power of the market, the real reason is not plagiarism itself, but is excluded from the market. Any product or model once put into use, only a certain degree of technical secrecy, it is difficult not to be "plagiarism." So do not be afraid of plagiarism, and focus should be on the prevention of products or services how not to be excluded from the market.

As startups learn more about their innovative products and prioritize market models, they have the opportunity to dominate the market. If there is a rationalization of the quality and price of a product or service, even the exclusion of malicious competition can be guaranteed through legal means.

But if it's a good idea, and it doesn't have the power to do it, it's not a bad thing to have a big company, because in essence you've made a great contribution to the value of the big company in that direction. This is also a positive contribution to society. Since their own weakness, there is no need to investigate plagiarism. On the contrary, it may be a good choice to integrate into a large company and achieve it together.

In addition, to believe that there are many good ideas in the world, you can think of, other people can think of. Even the patent, there is a deadline, this is the principle of human progress, should not be for selfish interests, according to the value of their own.

Response 4: Stand tall to see far

Author Pan Xiaoliang, technical director of the People's Network

I think the key to dealing with big companies is that you stand taller and see far more than big companies. If only to pick up money in the downstream of a large company, although may be picked up in the short term, but sooner or later the money will be taken away by large companies, then do not blame them plagiarism, in fact, you "block" their way.

I have visited an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and his company is still in its infancy, with only 3 teams. The entrepreneur told me that his project was being tried in the east of Philadelphia. I was intrigued by why I tried in Philadelphia. Wouldn't it be more convenient to be around Silicon Valley? His answer surprised me, he said, to prevent others from copying. I was inspired by the question of whether or not to be plagiarized when there were only 3. He thinks it's especially easy to find around Silicon Valley, and he's not worried about plagiarism from big companies, but from other startups. Or, in a way, he's not worried about plagiarism in big companies. Because big companies are not fast enough, smaller companies are more efficient and easier to copy.

"How startups deal with big companies" is a false proposition in a way. The world itself is full of plagiarism, jobs copied the Xerox graphics interface, and then was copied by Bill Gates. But isn't that the openness of the Internet? If big companies don't copy you, can you guarantee that other startups don't copy you? "Plagiarism" This question, just like a child fights, others give you a punch, you will not call back? I think it boils down to the fact that startups don't stand tall enough, their fists are hard enough, and they don't know how to protect themselves.