How startups deal with Giants: the strategy of utilizing judo

Peter Drucker's judo strategy is to take judo as an example to tell how to softness in the business competition, with the theory of small broad. UC excellent see co-founder, product President He Xiaopeng Chinese Internet companies have heard such a word-life, death, Tencent. Because this is every Internet start-up companies have to face the problem. When UC was just set up, at IDG, we were asked this classic question for the first time.　　Of course I do not think there is a standard answer to this question, but with the growth of UC, as we have become in the past few years Tencent's "three major competition" one, we have accumulated some deal with the giant competition experience and thinking, can share with you. Peter Drucker's judo strategy is to take judo as an example to tell how to softness in the business competition, with the theory of small broad. The essence has three aspects: movement, balance, leverage.　　Although the theory is dead, and the enterprise is alive, the utilization of judo strategy, is a start-up company how to deal with the Giants, the important reference to game.　　First, fast move--let yourself in the best position judo strategy has a premise, when too small on the too big, strategy ineffective, even if the small side of the move faster, balance again good, or can play force, the other side will beat you. So the first step in moving quickly is to avoid the giant's vision at the start of a small company. It is actually difficult for Tencent to be able to give their core operations teams, management and investment organizations a real focus.　　At this time, you can avoid their sight, to carry out their own rapid development, however, the time window in the end how long, depending on the company's growth rate is how fast, including the choice of product direction, product rapid iteration and data performance, as well as external marketing and publicity, such as the intensity of external performance. First, how to select the product direction. Of course, any entrepreneurial team should first consider what they want to do, and then consider how to deal with competition, which is a primary and secondary issue. Our director, Lei, said in a recent share that startups think about product direction, it should be "go big harsh" and have a good time (that is, the theory of standing in the tuyere, pigs can fly), but I personally think it's a good thing to look at, but it's really hard to do. Only a handful of very mature and experienced star entrepreneurs will be able to choose a "big market" from the start and keep the balance in the hurricane.　　In fact, most startups should choose one of their own interest, or a certain degree of good at, or the early, partial vertical areas of entrepreneurship, in this field, and then gradually grow and develop. Then, how to evaluate possible competition in the future. The entrepreneur can draw Tencent's products on a piece of white paper, to Tencent's two horizontal two vertical as the center, identify the various product lines of Tencent in the appropriate location, and then put what you want to do in the corresponding coordinates of the map, and think about what new you will encounter if your target product is made the first step.Competition or problems that need to be addressed. Obviously, the closer your product is to the center of the picture, the clearer your industry or product trend is, the more powerful your core team, the greater your user or income, and the louder your business or product will be, and the more intense competition you'll have. Early start should avoid in Tencent product grid in the center of the beginning of a positive competition, the proposed choice in the core business of Tencent periphery, or choose to be able to disrupt the other side of the business model products. Disruptive products are hard to imitate or suppress, even if they are the focus of the Giants, because the imitation will damage the business model that the Giants have already created.　　Just like 360 antivirus software, take a free model, even if the other then a much larger number of antivirus vendors see also can not follow up, because this will destroy their business model. The second step of fast moving is to ship small good turn. The direction, team and products of the start-up companies need to change rapidly. First of all, from my experience, all the successful entrepreneurs, the final success story and the first thought of the story are very different. Second, the product should be fast, not fast, but iterative fast. In order to pursue fast iterations, rapid iterations are of no value, understand the goals of fast iterations, the value of fast iterations, and how the team can truly value fast iterations. Not everyone can continue to publish and iterate over a product in a two-week, one-month cycle, and it's very difficult to keep the product iterative and how the product can grow in an iterative process. Second, as companies grow fast, teams can grow rapidly, from one person to 10 to 20 to 50, who need to quickly adjust the team's staffing. Finally, the company's direction and means of development, the smaller the company, the more flexible thinking, the more should be fickle, to survive in the change. A team in a big company makes a new product, there are a lot of questions to consider, such as legal risk, policy risk, and so on, but these may not be a risk for startups, so startups have to embrace change quickly, making mistakes that don't matter, but at a low cost.　　By trial and error, the flexibility to find their own good or adapt to the point, is a small company's unique advantage. This is more important than keeping fast moving-how to keep the balance.　　As you move away from the Giants at a rapid pace, you may fall due to poor balance, and most startups are developing to a certain stage because they can't keep their balance and beat themselves. The best way to avoid falling down because you can't keep your balance is by case study. Look at the past of the bigger startups, what sort of balance they have had, what they've gone through, and their solutions. According to our observation, start-up companies are most likely to make a balance problem in team building and capital control, so midsize startups must doTeam, capital level are maintained a high degree of unity. Because once entering the positive competition stage, rely on small skill or action survival already difficult, can only rely on the team's overall ability and product long-term strategic layout, to find their products in the short, medium and long term value, and according to these different periods of value points for advance layout.　　Effective control of capital can maintain team and long-term strategic stability, stable team and clear long-term strategy can ensure that startups can anticipate and solve problems ahead of time, a series of long-term layout at different points of the role. Another way to keep your balance is to practice. A soldier who has not been on the battlefield is not a good soldier, and if a product is valuable, it will face competition and more and more fierce competition. So the start-up company has grown to a certain stage, not only to avoid competition, but also to consciously choose opponents, with small, medium and even large opponents continue to fight, temper the team, temper products, only experienced a different war team, can have enough confidence and courage to face the larger Big Mac.　　Do the product team, keep on the front line of war does not matter, as long as you do not die, come back to raise the injury, you will become stronger. Third, through the force--the strength of the competitor into their own competitive advantage in the game with Tencent such big players, the key to play the force is not only to understand themselves, but also to understand competitors.　　By analyzing the competitor's business model, their products, their organizational system and so on, find their own strength to play the force point. The usual way of borrowing force is to stand on the shoulders of giants and make a success of themselves. On the shoulders of powerful rivals, seemingly weak start-ups, the rewards may be not just the rise in brand awareness, but also the educated investors who compete in such markets. Similarly, when startups ' products are not mature enough in some way, they can quickly use other people's products to enhance their ability. For example, the early 360 antivirus, is to cooperate with Kaspersky, by Kaspersky provide antivirus engine to enhance their ability to kill virus.　　Then when your ability to gradually improve, then consider to invest in mergers or acquisitions, or to launch their own products to compete. and to seek common interests, commonly known as "united Front" is also a way of leveraging force. Your opponent is your partner.　　The use of common enemy with a strong threat to the position of the original difficult to talk about cooperation, it is possible to easily achieve a win. It's also a good way to design your opponent's profit model. For example, in the 3B War, 360 sustained impact on Baidu's pharmaceutical market advertising is a good case. In the mobile Internet game domain, it is also a UC and 91 so in the second and Third Army mobile gaming platform, will force Tencent to improve the proportion of mobile games. The vested interests of giants do not follow, suffer, follow, nor suffer.　　But for the attackers, there is no burden. It must be stated that the use of judo strategy is only used by startups in the face of competition from giants"Tao", and in the actual competition, in the face of Tencent, such as giants and entrepreneurial competition commonly used in several strokes of the killer, but also to have the corresponding "surgery" to crack.　　If I have time, I will introduce it later. (He Xiaopeng)