How to kill a tech giant or become one

How to kill a tech giant or become one

Way back, it would almost sound bizarre that a new startup business would attempt to challenge an old timer and win in market competition because there are usually a lot of tricks and plays these already established giants could deal and make the new startups disappear into thing air like Thanos just snapped his fingers.

Some of the old tricks in the book include:

• The price war: Here the giants beat down their price and still stay afloat thanks to their economies of scale and large customer base. When new comers try to adjust price to that of the giant, cost of production shoots up way higher than their selling price leaving them running at a loss and in the long run. With time, the little guy gets frustrated and leaves the stage for the giants before or when they run into bankruptcy.
• Buy and kill: Here the giants dangles a sweet deal for the little guy, offering to acquire their company. This is usually a dream come true for some founders — to get noticed by the big guys and get acquired by them and cash out. But what they usually don’t know is that the giants are only offering to buy them to kill them. They kill the vision and idea behind the startup and put the whole startup away from ever rising to it’s full potential. Just like icing on a sour cake. Deal looks so good on the outside but with deathly intent. The giants always kill the little guy.
• The copy and paste: In the good old days, inventors had the protection from patenting their works and keeping production and distribution of their idea under their control. But the internet Era brought with it a lot of updates to what an invention/innovation is. If you built a product that allows people post a picture that stays online for 24 hours and disappear, a small genie could independently code the same product and give it another name. Giants in the startup world also use this strategy to frustrate competition as well. I don’t intend to call names but have you noticed you can have snapchat on your whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram. Oh! You prefer tiktok? Guess what you can also do that with reels. Because of years of experience, more capital, more reach, and more of everything, a giant can easily bully the small guys by copying their idea and sharing it to a larger audience so much so that the small guys never really get to see the world as they might wished to.

These tactics and so many others have been deployed by the big guys over the years and unfortunately for the small guys, it has always worked out for the giants, but the tables are turning gradually and we are getting to see more Davids slay these giants and here’s how:
In recent times, we have seen the small guys take out the big guys like Uber, bolt, taxify challenging the conventional transport giants, Netflix giving Blockbuster and others a run for their money, Paystack, flutterwave, KudaBank, Piggyvest taking old time Money giants back to the classroom and one of the words best sums up this strategy - Disruption.

Probably by taking strategy classes from Sun Tzu,

The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

Some more recent startups have maximized the ignorance of the giants to their own advantage, putting the giants to early retirement and even becoming giants themselves.

Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.

First by identifying and meeting an unmet or neglected need of a giant’s customer base especially in a way that’s subtle and easily overlooked by the giant, these small startups gain quite a number of subscribers who are still subscribers to the giant.

Gradually, the small unattractive guy pulls out the same weapon the giant would have used on them earlier - the copy and paste strategy. In addition to this new solution that is meeting neglected needs, the little guy replicates and offers the same already existing offers of the giant - boom! Checkmate or (at least a major check on the opponent’s king).

Usually when this disruption happens, it comes as a shock to the giant and things could go different ways for these giants depending on how they respond. But if the little guys stay focused on their goal, supplying simplified new offers and regular offers of the giants, with time, they either kill the giant or grow into a giant and keep contending on the same level as the regular giants.

So here’s the big secret: Disruption is the best strategy going up against a giant and disruption is the sure way to remain a giant.

How to kill a tech giant or become one was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.