Think “Differences”

The Internet industry is very dynamic and creative, blogs such as Techcrunch or Mashable report webservices lauches everyday. There are even days where competitors are getting out of beta at the same time ( take Disqus and IntenseDebate for today’s example!). As a entrepreneur, I am always looking for new concepts, products or services. Once every week, I come up with a new idea, and then I start to notice that someone has already been implementing this idea or something very similar. Has it happened to you? How did you feel? I felt bad, but I really shouldn’t. Look closer, this product might not be exactly the same and there are actually chances that there’s enough room for many similare services!

It’s very human : when you want to describe and idea, a concept, you usually draw parallells with existing stuff, things that people know and understand : this is not the good behavior! You should first concentrate on your difference, and what make your product different, or even better. A common point is never a competitive advantage, when a difference, even if it’s not “visible” by your users can be a very strong competitive advantage.

Look at Google : when Page and Brin started their search engine, it was just another search engine for many… but with a different algorithm that made its success and was litteraly 5 years ahead of competition! Dell was just another computer maker, its difference was clearly in the supply chain and made it very successful for a few years. Facebook is not the first social network, it actually came pretty late on the market, but, well, it’s the first one that behaves like a platform!

So, if you’re building a new start-up, if you just had a great idea, concentrate on what makes it different from the other ones. It might even be very little things, but the more you cultivate them, the bigger you’ll become!