Competitors: how scary to live and how to survive if you are copied

Do you want the head of the company to lie to you? Ask him about the attitude to competitors.
Most will answer like this.

• We love our competitors. They help us get better.
• We would never become a leader if we were not helped by competitors.
• We are not afraid of competitors, we are stronger than them.

Well, you understand that all this is not true ...

No matter how I would like to present the relationship to competitors like this:


')
In fact, everything is much tougher:



This is the time to quote Nietzsche "Everything that does not kill us makes us stronger."
To this I can answer that everything that does not kill us may well try to do it again.
And still there is such an opinion:



Of course, you can always reassure yourself with the belief that the market for personnel monitoring systems in Russia has not yet been formed, which means that the pie is big will be enough for everyone.
But I have to remind Trout's axiom, which he described in Marketing Wars.

There are no number two companies. It happens number one and all the rest.

As the market begins to mature, the piece of cake number two will shrink more and more.

Do you want your company to be number two? Me not.

What is the main danger coming from competitors in the software market? Of course, copying .

Front-wheel drive car was first used in 1929 in the American car Cord L29. Awesome technical innovation that has changed both the automotive industry and driving methods.
But the brand Cord does not exist since 1937.

If a product or service is in demand and can be copied, it will be copied.



Whatever your startup is doing, know that many competitors are already looking at your product.
Are you so innovative that you have no competitors at all? Do not worry, they will appear tomorrow.

Any team of programmer friends or a company where a few extra hundreds of thousands of rubles are lying around can quickly program or service as well as yours. And maybe better.
Because they see the strengths and weaknesses of an existing product, they will not try, make mistakes, and collect feedback from customers.

I have already written how the simplicity of developing working time accounting systems made an “entrance ticket” to this market so much cheaper that quite a lot of systems differing from each other were produced. And tomorrow there will be twice as many :)

“What shall we do, boyars?”

You can patent and register. All that, according to Russian laws, is patentable.
The only problem is that in Russia there is little that can be patented.
By and large, you can protect protect the logo and program code. You can prevent competitors from creating a program whose one-to-one interface will repeat yours. That is, to fight off scammers who steal code, disguise themselves as you, or try to conduct business on your behalf, you can.
But Article 52 of the European Patent Convention expressly prohibits the patenting of algorithms, methods and computer programs. And since we are a part of Europe, even here the American methods of protection in the form of patenting algorithms and programs do not work.

So, if a competitor wants to create his application with a similar (but not identical interface) that uses the algorithms for you, he will do it. And you can not stop him in any way.

You can use the fact that your company first created the product (and the rest copied). You can tell that you have been on the market for 10/20/30 years, and nobody heard about your predecessors a year ago.

Have you ever heard of VisiCalc? I think no. But this is the world's first spreadsheet. And even more. It is often said that it was Visicalc that turned microcomputers from entertainment and hobby tools into a serious business tool. In total, more than 700,000 copies of the program were sold (while the number of computers then was much less than it is now).



The release in 1979 of the first version of the program for the computer Apple II led to the fact that this machine from a tool for a hobby has become a welcome and useful financial tool for record keeping. Apparently, this is exactly what led IBM to decide to enter the personal computer market.
And where is this program now?

Don't you still believe that the championship and the number of years on the market do not help in the fight against competitors? Then let me tell you about SuperCalc (in the distant 80s and 90s I worked on it myself), about Lotus 1-2-3, about Quattro Pro ...



Where are all these programs? And most importantly - where are all these companies?
They were all swept from the face of the earth by Microsoft with her Excel. Because Excel worked fine with the graphical interface of Windows, but all of the above programs are not.

So, the software market is not a market for wines, brandies, chocolate and other things where traditions are valued. It is more important for the consumer what he can get from the product right now than what places this product occupied a year or two or three years ago. It is useless to frighten even that a competitor may unexpectedly leave the market. “That will go away,” the customer thinks, “then we will choose something else. You offer me all the implementation in an hour, so the cost of the transition will not be big. ”

You can reduce prices to become more attractive than competitors. Ohhhh, that's exactly the path to nowhere. First, there can always be a competitor with a richer investor, who will happily join in this exciting discount race (and wait until you go bankrupt). Secondly, as a result of dumping you can wean consumers to pay for your goods. And you will remain a poor winner.

And finally, did the completely free Internet Explorer help Microsoft win the browser battle?

Dead end?



No, happy end is still ahead. In fact, you can fight with competitors and that's how.

Be faster than others

The architecture of your product and the business processes of your company should be designed to respond as quickly as possible to customer needs as well as to changes in the market and the environment. Remember that spreadsheets did not even destroy the lack of functionality (they did not shine with earlier versions of Excel), but the fact that Excel worked much better under Windows. And the rest of the output of this graphical environment (and later the operating system) was missed.

Be more open to the customer than others.

Tell me more. About how the product is made, how decisions are made on its further development. Why one or another functional was chosen. How the product is arranged (of course, there is no need to give out secrets, but buyers do not like black boxes, especially if they are credited with miraculous properties).
Listen more. Organize customer feedback, let them communicate with each other, share experiences, form communities.
People need to understand that they are the main part of your business.

Create your product with customers

Steve Jobs always knew what customers needed even before people started thinking about it. If the day before the announcement of the iPhone, he suggested that people use a finger instead of a stylus, he would get a storm of indignation. But he announced and received a storm of admiration. Does this mean that you do not need to listen to customers?

Certainly customers need to listen. And implement their proposals. But it is equally necessary to try to get into the skin of the client and imagine what is convenient, what is not convenient, what to add, what to remove.
Too many products are made by developers for themselves. Since it is convenient for them, as they like, it was easier for them to program. And then the developers are surprised that customers have a different opinion regarding their creation.

Share plans

Talking about what innovations will be in your product is useful for three reasons. First, customers see that the product develops and by paying you the money they invest in development. Secondly, you demonstrate the very openness and involvement of clients. And, most importantly, when potential buyers compare your product with the products of a competitor, they will compare the amount of functionality that competitors already have with what you have and which will be created !

And may everything be good in your business (unless of course you are my competitors;))



Andrey Ignatov