Your startup needs defensibility

This point leads us to a neat definition of defensibility in this context; it refers to a companies' ability to maintain a competitive advantage in order to protect both it's profit margins and market share.https://gamefowlforsale.com/

Thank it is a good post

It's always a risk. So many "feature" startup companies, and if a big tech company decides to add that "feature" to their tech, they're toast. It's a trade-off though, because these "feature" startups ride the coattails of growth of the bigger companies. The downside is they can be obsoleted overnight. So it's growth at the cost of defensibility.

If you want to build a complete "business" don't build a "feature" company. However, your growth is likely to be slower. The ideal situation is you build something that grows, and grows, and by the time the large companies start to think of it as an interesting market, you're so far ahead that you almost cannot be caught even with deep-funded competitors.

Because the truth is Stripe, which essentially has endless amounts of capital, can create and integrate any feature they’d like and put you out of business.

Nobody has an endless amount of capital. If that was the case, it would be impossible to play against them. But practically anyone with a huge revenue pipeline or a venture capital round beyond you (seed if you are bootstrapping, A if you are seed, B if you are A, etc) will have more resources and capability than you. You have to accept that reality and plan accordingly.

One way to achieve defensibility is to focus on areas that the larger companies are not focusing on. This will allow you to differentiate your business and provide value to your customers that the larger companies cannot provide.

Yup. This is probably one of the most effective play one can do against a stronger player. By focusing on "loose bricks", the parts of the market that bigger players ignore, one can gain significant advantages.

The thing is, this is not just a defensive play. This play can be utilized as an offensive play against a goliath. A great case study on this is how Canon penetrated the UK market against Xerox. The Japanese companies back then used this approach against the biggest players in the global markets.

Another way to achieve this is to build a community around your product, this way even if a large company does enter your market, your customers will be less likely to leave because of the strong relationships they have formed within your community.

Also true. But extremely hard to do. The thing with competitive advantages is the harder they are to build the harder they are to copy. So, community is one of the hardest advantages one can generate for their business. It is very hard to create, grow and maintain but very easy to break. If focusing on this approach, you should have a c-level community person on the team.

You have to understand something, though: The ecosystems are generally how the goliaths manage the extremes of genesis to commodity. But also, Stripe's play shows you how the competition is forcing your service to be a commodity. If this started, you need to start focusing on higher order activities because there is a war coming.