Startups : If You Don't Have Competitors, You Have More Chances OfFailure!

The first question you hear as a startup - 'what if your competitors start doing what you do'. Many startups will say 'we don't have competitors or we are first in the market or we have X innovation and hence no competitor'.

Reality is you have plenty of competitors. Politely, candidly you should say 'having competitor validates market need & we will survive-prosper-lead'! As a Startup , you are introducing a solution for which you need a market. You should be worried if you claim you have no competitors.

Customers will hate you if you don't have competitors, you will be seen us monopolistic, average service, high cost, low supportive company! The reason being they don't know how good you are by benchmarking with your competitor(s).

Your first few investors (friends, family) will doubt your startup potential as they can't visually verify scope of growth or proof of it elsewhere. Everything you do would be seen as random, impractical, too optimistic, gamble.

Your product would be slow to be creative & less user driven as you wont able to offer a disruptive model due to lack of market feedback on how it does vs other products, what other way same service can be delivered, for example think how it would be if 37signals was only Startup doing project management solution for decades! Now imagine how Podio/Zoho have made different approach to similar service hence offering wealth of knowledge & feedback to 37signals. No competitor means you will dig your own grave.

You will have biggest issues on attracting top talent.

Your startup will be doing all the hard work to create a market, opportunities, rather than co-creating the same in far less cost (acquisition & business development). This high cost would mean your startup is in danger of early death unless your product/ service had some early avatar /competitors to which customers can relate to.

You will suffer due to lack of ecosystem & having to do most related work on your own.

Stand up and admit you have competitor(s) whom you love /hate /ignore /fight.

This is a guest post by Santosh Panda, founder of ticketing startup Ayojak. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this column are strictly personal and not that of YourStory.in.