When it comes to industry, it always doesn’t mean that bigger is always better. Small businesses, primarily startups, once their strategy is defined, can be a lot more versatile and precise than their established corporate counterparts.
Sure the majority of startups usually lack capital, or may need additional funding, but once the proper mindset is adopted and on track, a startup gives you considerable advantages over the big bulky corporations, which can be dinosaurs to innovate.
These big companies can have demanding shareholders, who are wanting to exceed expectations and profit margins, wanting better overall results, resulting in these huge conglomerates to become vulnerable.
A new smaller more agile business on the other hand, can take full advantage within a narrow range when it comes to major decision making, usually being able to turn ideas into action on a dime, taking full advantage of gaps in the marketplace.
The startup has tremendous freedom as well as the versatility to quickly go after new markets, allowing them to tap and tailor into new passions and skills. With the proper mindset, what’s presented is the opportunity of turning scarcity into abundance.
The Advantages Of Startup Companies
Attacking The Vulnerability Of Big Business
Your startup should be attacking the biggest markets possible, or creating them. If you do decide to go after a defined market, the reason why it’s big is because there are big players who dominate it.
You would think that these big corporate giants would also do anything they can to protect their market share. But that’s not always the case since they can’t or won’t cut their prices below their costs, this because their quarterly profits would decline, which would lower their stock price.
Since you the start-up has lower operating costs, you can sell your product at a lower price, and still make a profit. Once you begin to gain market share, the big corporates won’t be able to match your price, or service, unless they slash their own costs, this enough to somehow preserve their current profit margins. But they’ll rarely do that.
Attracting The Best Talent
While there are some who enjoy the security and prestige of working for a big established company, others feel completely invisible and useless working for them, feeling completely unfulfilled.
To large corporations, the employee knows that they’re just a number to them on the payroll, where they can also be eliminated from their job at any time, to cut costs.
This opens the door for your startup to attract some of this talent, even if your salaries or benefits aren’t as high. This because the majority of people crave the opportunity to make a difference and be recognized.
So your task is to convince these talented individuals that your start-up can give them profound meaning, they can be the difference, so that they’ll surrender their higher paying salary, and decide to grow with you.
The only way to do so is you believing that your new company can alter your industry, persuading these individuals that you have the “goods” to turn your startup to a roaring success. One common method is also offering stock options, or equity, which helps as well.
Adapt Quicker Than Big Companies
Large corporations can take forever to make decisions. The reason being that the entire boardroom needs to be consulted and convinced before they can even introduce a brand new concept, product, or service, raise or lower its prices, or chase new market opportunities.
And because it takes forever for these big companies to decide anything, it usually takes even longer to implement the changes, collect market research, and then decide whether their strategies were right or wrong.
A startup can quickly go through these same decision cycles in the time it takes a big company to set up a meeting. The start-up is able to get smarter quicker, and take advantage of new opportunities because they can get their marketing message out faster, while finding out what works or doesn’t, and then adapting to what they’ve learned.
And because this learning is vital for startups, they take that feedback a lot more seriously than any big company ever would. The thirst and the ability to be able to operate at a higher operating speed is a huge advantage.
Gain Market Share By Offering More To Your Customers
If you happen to picked the right opportunity at the right time, larger companies have usually set the bar low by offering their customers a product which is usually priced much too high, while doing a poor job of meeting their needs.
Your startup can be poised to deliver the same customer far more value and bang for their buck, while reaching them quicker.
But also keep in mind that there’s some who may hesitate to do business with you, the new startup, since there’s a good chance that you won’t be around in a year, or two. But attempting to overcome this problem can be easy, in concept anyways.
Begin by finding a problem that your customer has, and there’s no one else in the market who’s currently able to solve it. If your start-up is somehow capable of resolving this issue, and do so adequately or at a lower price, then you can boost the odds of grabbing that market share.
These strategies may not appear to be threats to a big company, but if you happen to be an entrepreneur who means business, you can and should be able to chip away and begin taking your share that the big company owns.