Competition

How do you handle competition in a new industry? If you're one of the first in a new and appealing market, you're doubtlessly going to experience imitators. It shouldn't be discouraging. If anything, it's a compliment. We're experiencing that at HouseFLIX.

It means we're doing something right and something worth copying and that's a good thing.

We don't feel immediately threatened by any of our competitors, but a problem occurs if enough new emergents appear and there are no clear leaders. Because, then it becomes a proven and attractive new market for a bigger company with far greater resources. If there are no clear leaders, then they'll design their own system and cherry-pick the best strategy rather than buy anyone out. That's no good for any of the smaller players.

The big companies experience similar situations all the time. Look at Microsoft's offer to buy Yahoo. They decided that they have to merge resources in order to give Google a worthy competitor in the online advertising industry.

Perhaps smaller companies have to learn to do the same.