07- How should you think about competitors?
Last updated
Last updated
Foreword by Des Traynor, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Office
When we started Intercom, we didn’t try align ourselves with a particular product category or against a particular competitor. Our competitors became more obvious later, when we started realizing which solutions people were considering alongside ours. But early on, our premise was pretty simple: if you have a web business and you want to talk to your customers you should use Intercom. 当我们开始使用Intercom时，我们并没有尝试与特定的产品类别或特定的竞争对手。我们的竞争对手后来变得更加明显，当我们开始意识到人们正在考虑的解决方案。但早期，我们的前提很简单：如果你有一个网络业务，而且你想和你的客户交谈，你应该使用Intercom。
Today you might call this category creation, but we weren’t going for that at the time. We weren’t trying to sell anything other than what we were: a solution to a few problems we knew existed: “Are your customers slipping away? Are they not onboarding correctly? Are they not using all your features?” We aligned ourselves around the problems we knew people had and people bought us for those problems. They didn’t buy us because they were shopping around for a product in the support or marketing category. 今天你可以称这个类别的创作，但我们当时不会这样做。我们不是想卖掉除了我们以外的任何东西：解决我们所知道的几个问题：“你的客户是否滑落了？他们没有正确登机吗？他们没有使用你所有的功能吗？“我们围绕着我们所知道的人们所遇到的问题，人们为我们解决了这些问题。他们没有购买我们，因为他们在支持或营销类别的产品购物。
It helped that we were selling a technology that was innovative: in-app messaging. The early customer conversations usually went like this: “You’re the guys that do those in-app messages, right?” or “I saw your product used on __ and it’s something I need too.” 它帮助我们销售一种创新技术：应用内消息。早期的客户对话通常是这样的：“你是那些在应用程序内的消息，对吗？”或“我看到你的产品用在 ，这也是我需要的东西”。
People weren’t comparing Intercom to Zendesk or Marketo. There were no bake-offs or feature battles. 人们并没有把Intercom与Zendesk或Marketo进行比较。没有烘烤或特色的战斗。
If there were, and if we had employed analysts to plot the competitive landscape, it likely would have been a distraction, if not sent us entirely off course. Today we’re quite aware of the products that compete with us, but back then we focused only on the problems we wanted to solve. at’s always my advice to new companies as well. Focus on the problem you’re solving; worrying about competitors can come later. 如果有的话，如果我们雇用了分析师来绘制竞争格局，那可能会分散注意力，如果不是完全不给我们的话。今天我们非常了解与我们竞争的产品，但是当时我们只关注我们想要解决的问题。总是对新公司的建议。专注于您解决的问题;担心竞争对手可以稍后来。
All founders can relate to the pressure of launching first. It’s a common belief that if your competitor beats you to market, they’ll get rich and you’ll be dead. But is that really true?
所有的创始人都可以与第一次发射的压力有关。这是一个普遍的信念，如果你的竞争对手打败你上市，他们会变得富有，你会死的。但这是真的吗？
As it turns out, not really. More often than not, being first doesn’t matter. According to research by the American Marketing Association, 47% of first-movers fail, compared with 8% of fast followers.
事实证明，不是真的。通常情况下，首先没有关系。根据美国营销协会的研究，47％的受访者失败，而快速追踪者则为8％。
The cost of success is that people will copy you, so if your app takes o , you can bet there will be 20 knocko s just weeks after you hit the front page of Product Hunt. So how should you deal with the competition? Consider this our guide to moving first, disruption and what that means for your product.
成功的成本是人们会复制你，所以如果你的应用程序需要o，你可以打赌，在打完产品搜寻的首页之后的几周之内就会有20个。那么你应该如何处理竞争呢？考虑这个我们的指南，第一，中断和什么意味着你的产品。
Alan Cooper, father of the Visual Basic programming language, said that being first to market means nothing. Yes, being first offers opportunities which can be exploited as advantages. But those first mover advantages have a short shelf life and eventually need to be replaced with long term strategies.
Visual Basic编程语言的父亲艾伦·库珀（Alan Cooper）表示，首先上市意味着什么。是的，首先提供可以利用的优势的机会。但是，这些先发优势的保质期很短，最终需要被长期战略所取代。
The three first mover advantages you can gain are technological, defensive or customer. Let’s break each one down to see how you can harness it.
您可以获得的三大优势是技术，防御或客户。让我们把每个人都打破一下，看看你能如何利用它。
If you de ne a category yourself, you have a potential head start since you’re the one trailblazing. You’ll have the expert knowledge, analytics and customer feedback that nobody else has, so you should keep that very quiet.
如果你自己设定一个类别，那么你是一个潜在的开始，因为你是一个开始。您将拥有没有其他人拥有的专业知识，分析和客户反馈，因此您应该保持安静。Don’t release prototypes, explain how anything works or even broadcast customer feedback. If you do, it gives competitors a head start. Otherwise, they would need to learn all of this themselves, but you’ve given it to them for free instead.
不要发布原型，说明什么工作，甚至广播客户反馈。如果你这样做，它将给竞争对手一个开始。否则，他们需要自己学习所有这些，但是你已经自由地给它们了。 A great example of how not to do this is Google Glass, which is perplexing if you look at it through this lens. Google chose to throw away all of its advantages by releasing the product in an embryonic phase. It was never o cially launched, nor was it developed in secret.
一个很好的例子，就是Google Glass，如果你透过这个镜头看的话，这是令人困惑的。谷歌选择通过在初级阶段发布产品来摒弃所有的优势。它从来没有发起过，也没有秘密发展。
Instead, it was in market, unfinished for anyone to use and for tech bloggers to shower with. If there were any good use cases for the product, competitors discovered them and iterated quickly on better products that ful lled the same function.
相反，它是在市场上，没有任何人使用和技术博主淋浴。如果产品有很好的使用情况，竞争对手会发现它们，并快速迭代更好的产品，这些产品具有相同的功能。
So you’re out-innovating your competitors, but now you need to defend yourself. ere are many tactics you could employ to stop competitors from following your exact footsteps, but here are a few examples: 所以你是创新的竞争对手，但现在你需要保卫自己。你可以采用许多策略来阻止竞争对手追随你的确切脚步，但这里有几个例子：
Secure exclusive partnerships with core component suppliers, such as paying a supplier large sums to ensure that no one else can use their technology in your industry. e.g when AT&T paid over the odds for exclusive rights to launch the iPhone. 与核心零部件供应商保持独家合作伙伴关系，例如向供应商支付大笔款项，以确保没有其他人可以在您的行业使用其技术。例如，AT＆T支付推出iPhone专有权的几率。
Kill primary distribution channels for your competitors, such as block booking advertising with your best performing networks or platforms e.g when Zappos aggressively advertised against shoe manufacturers. 为您的竞争对手杀死主要的分销渠道，例如使用最佳表现的网络或平台来阻止预订广告，例如当Zappos积极向鞋厂广告宣传广告时。
Win patents to prevent your technology being directly copied and used in your industry. e.g. Amazon’s 1-Click patent. 赢得专利以防止您的技术直接复制和使用在您的行业。亚马逊的1点击专利。
The key is using your firrst mover advantage to ensure that it’s an advantage for as long as possible – possibly enough to win the market entirely. 关键在于利用您的最大优势，确保尽可能长的优势 - 完全可以赢得市场。
By locking-in the early adopters – those who are the fastest to adopt new technology, or most in uential in the space – it can become impossible for your competition to get a foothold.
通过锁定早期采用者 - 那些最快采用新技术的人，或者在空间上最有潜力的人 - 这样的竞争就不可能立足。
This is particularly effective in the formative stages of a new product category, and there are two diffenent ways to do this:
这在新产品类别的形成阶段特别有效，有两种不同的方式来做到这一点：
Bribery: Simply give away free devices or accounts to noteworthy people, and let them spread the word. 贿赂：简单地将免费的设备或账户交给值得注意的人，让他们传播这个词。
Long-term contracts: If you’re con dent your product is su ciently desirable, remove mobility of customers with a nice 12- or 18-month contract. 长期合同：如果您认为您的产品满足要求，则可以通过12个月或18个月的良好合约来消除客户的流动性。
A great example of this is Uber. In the earliest days of Uber, the company took to the ground to give out millions of free coupons to customers, o ered heavy discounts to anyone referring their friends and even persuaded its competitors’ drivers to switch with cash incentives and appealing car loans (which happened to lock them in for up to two years).
这是Uber的一个很好的例子。在Uber的最早期间，该公司已经到场地向客户发放了数百万的免费优惠券，对任何提及他们的朋友的人们都有很大的折扣，甚至劝说其竞争对手的司机改用现金奖励和吸引汽车贷款（其中碰巧把它们锁定了两年）。
If you are first in your market, you alone bear the costs of creating the market. You alone need to convince the world your o ering is valid and once you’ve done that, your fast followers show up.
如果你是第一个在你的市场，你一个人承担创造市场的成本。你一个人需要说服世界你的妳是有效的，一旦你这样做，你的快速追随者出现。
The copycats have all the advantages. ey can copy the best parts of your products, don’t make your mistakes and can even use your product to explain their own.
模仿者有所有优点。ey可以复制你的产品的最好的部分，不要犯错误，甚至可以使用你的产品来解释自己的。Their weakness? ey don’t actually know what they’re doing, so they have no vision.
他们的弱点？他们并不知道他们在做什么，所以他们没有视野。
These fast followers might be able to copy the “what” of your product but never the “why.” eir best outcome is a bad copy of your already hurried execution.
这些快速的追随者可能能够复制您的产品的“什么”，但从来不是“为什么”。eir最佳结果是您已经匆忙执行的一个坏的副本。
One thing to keep in mind is that speed is important. If you’re moving forward fast enough, you’ll limit these followers to shipping yesterday’s ideas tomorrow. e first mover advantage isn’t just given to the first product in any category, and it might not exist in your industry yet – it’s fought for and earned.
要记住的一件事是速度很重要。如果您的进度足够快，您将限制这些追随者明天发送昨天的想法。最初的优势不仅仅是给予任何类别的第一个产品，它可能不存在于您的行业 - 它是为争取和赢得的。
So, with this knowledge, is first mover advantage really quanti able? According to the Harvard Business Review it’s nothing more than a half- truth, and the results vary so wildly that it can’t be measured. Sure, if you execute and use it to your advantage it’s real, but it’s also possible you’re first and then your startup dies when something better comes along.
那么，有了这个知识，第一个动机的优势真的量化吗？根据“哈佛商业评论”，这只不过是一个半真相，结果变化非常大，无法衡量。当然，如果你执行并使用它是你的优势，它是真实的，但也可能你是第一，然后你的初创公司死了，当更好的事情出现。
In a product-focused world it varies by category, too. If you look at
在以产品为中心的世界中，它也因类别而异。如果你看 how Gmail rapidly disrupted email services, but then the category Gmail如何快速中断电子邮件服务，但是那个类别 fell stagnant for the following ten years, you’d probably think once a market’s been won it’s over. But in that time, hundreds of social networks were born, bought, acquired and killed.
在接下来的十年中，停滞不前，一旦市场获胜，您可能会想。但在那个时候，数以百计的社交网络诞生，购买，获得和杀害。 The same is true of payment technologies. For almost a decade there was no innovation in payments for businesses or consumers. But suddenly in the last few years, Stripe, Square, Braintree and many others have disrupted the market entirely.
支付技术也是如此。近十年来，企业或消费者的付款没有创新。但是，在过去几年里，Stripe，Square，Braintree等众多的市场完全打乱了市场。Gmail may have “won” email, but the reality is fairly simple: nothing better has come along since, and sometimes categories can go dormant for a long time before suddenly seeing a jump in innovation.
Gmail可能会“赢得”电子邮件，但现实是相当简单的：没有什么比以前更好，有时类别可以长时间休眠，突然间看到创新的跳跃。
Almost every startup from every incubator claims to be disruptive, but if you look closely the claim almost always falls apart. ere are only two types of disruption: new market disruption and low end disruption.
几乎每个孵化器的每一个初创公司都声称是破坏性的，但是如果你密切关注这个说法，几乎总是分崩离析。只有两种类型的破坏：新的市场中断和低端的破坏。
New market disruptions provide a simplifying technology that a whole new set of customers can use. For example, your product is available for customers in a new way. ink Spotify’s music service versus buying MP3s on iTunes.
新的市场中断提供了一整套新客户可以使用的简化技术。例如，您的产品以新的方式提供给客户。墨水Spotify的音乐服务，而不是在iTunes上购买MP3。
It could be that you’re cheaper, available in more countries or an entirely new mechanism of delivery. A good example is Ryanair, the low-cost European airline that created an entirely new market of travellers by o ering routes that nobody else did at prices that were on par with trains, buses and even driving. Suddenly air travel was available to millions.
可能是因为您可以在更多的国家或全新的交付机制中更便宜。一个很好的例子是，廉价的欧洲航空公司瑞安航空公司（Ryanair），通过航线创造了一个全新的旅客市场，没有人以与火车，公共汽车甚至开车相同的价格来做。突然间有数百万的航空旅行。
Low end disruption is when a product steals the worst, cheapest customers from the bottom of an existing market by nding a better business model that works with an even lower-cost o ering. is opportunity only exists when the market leader is producing products on a higher tier than what the wider market wants or even needs. is doesn’t always need to be nancial either. For example, it’s easier for users to jump on Twitter and make a 140-character tweet than it is to blog, which requires setting up Wordpress and knowing how to get a domain name.
低端的中断是当一个产品从现有市场的底部窃取最差，最便宜的客户，通过建立一个更好的商业模式，以更低成本的成本运行。只有当市场领导者在比较广泛的市场需求甚至需要更高层次生产产品时才有机会。并不总是需要财务。例如，用户更容易跳到Twitter上，做一个140个字符的推文，而不是博客，这需要设置Wordpress并知道如何获取域名。
Another example of this is the Flip digital camera which launched in 2007 and stole customers from the digital camera companies – Canon, Nikon and Sony – by being more a ordable and easy to use. Bought for $590 million by Cisco in 2009, Flip was the darling of the camera industry and the poster child of low end disruption. What could go wrong?
另一个例子是2007年推出的Flip数码相机，其数码相机公司 - 佳能，尼康和索尼 - 的客户，更加有条不紊，易于使用。买 由于思科2009年的销售额为5.9亿美元，Flip是摄像机行业的宠儿和低端中断的海报小孩。什么可能出错？
It turned out there was an even worse video camera at an even lower price point that the public were happy to use: the free camera in smartphones. Two years after its acquisition, Flip got to experience low end disruption itself. It was shut down, and 550 employees were let go.
原来，有一个更差的摄像机，在更低的价格点，公众很高兴使用：免费的相机在智能手机。Flip收购两年后，本身就经历了低端的中断。被关闭了，550名员工放开了。
What’s important to take away from this is that disruption can be swift, not slow. Everyone will give you disruption examples like Intel processors or mainframe computers, which realistically took decades to impact the industry, but this isn’t always the case.
取消这一点很重要的是，破坏可能很快，而不是缓慢。每个人都会给你中断的例子，如英特尔处理器或大型计算机，实际上需要几十年影响行业，但情况并非如此。
In an online world where instant global availability is a few clicks away, market adoption can take minutes, not months. Flip’s camera only claimed the throne for 18 months before dying. Another great example are sat nav companies Garmin and TomTom. In September 2007 they were worth $38 billion combined. As we discussed in Chapter 1, once the iPhone came along, the sat nav business was decimated.
在一个在线世界中，即时全球可用性几点击，市场的采用可能需要几分钟，而不是几个月。Flip的相机只能在死亡前宣称王位18个月。另一个很好的例子是卫视导航公司Garmin和TomTom。2007年9月，它们的价值合计380亿美元。正如我们在第1章中讨论的那样，一旦iPhone出现，卫星导航业务就会消失。
You might be despairing by this point, because you’ve realized your business isn’t disruptive, but don’t. Not all businesses need to be disruptive. It’s entirely possible to go head to head with existing businesses and beat them at their own game over time by using better technology, design, product, route to market, etc. is is a proven route to take, but a slightly longer one.
在这一点上，您可能会绝望，因为您已经意识到您的业务不是破坏性的，但不会。并不是所有的企业都需要破坏性。通过使用更好的技术，设计，产品，上市路线等，随时随地都可以与现有的业务一起去打败自己的游戏，这是一条经过验证的路线，但是稍长一点。
As Andy Grove, Intel’s longtime CEO, said, “Success breeds complacency, complacency breeds failure and only the paranoid survive.” Startup founders have to remember that their product is already obsolete because it’s out in the world and people are already using it.
That comes with the risk that there’s probably a newer, faster way for your customers to get things done in the world. And it doesn’t involve you. Even if everything is going great, competitors are emerging. Before you know it, the ground has been torn out from under you – but you might not have even felt it.
It’s fun to imagine the sat nav companies were all asleep at the cash register, completely ignoring all these new threats. e reality is that they were probably all watching the iPhone keynote and couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
Customers don’t wait around for you to innovate. e world will move on, with or without you. What typically happens is that someone puts something out, and the incumbent just says, “Yeah, but who will use that?” And by the time they’ve decided to ght, it’s already a done deal.
As Andy Grove, Intel’s longtime CEO, said, “Success breeds complacency, complacency breeds failure and only the paranoid survive.”
英特尔长期担任首席执行官安迪•格罗夫（Andy Grove）则表示：“成功骄傲自满，自满情绪失败，只有偏执狂才能幸免。” Startup founders have to remember that their product is already obsolete because it’s out in the world and people are already using it.
创始创始人必须记住，他们的产品已经过时了，因为它已经在世界各地，而且人们已经在使用它了。
That comes with the risk that there’s probably a newer, faster way for your customers to get things done in the world. And it doesn’t involve you. Even if everything is going great, competitors are emerging. Before you know it, the ground has been torn out from under you – but you might not have even felt it.
这带来了一个风险，可能是一个更新，更快的方式让您的客户在世界上完成任务。它不涉及你。即使一切都很好，竞争对手正在出现。在你知道之前，地面已经从你下面撕裂了 - 但你可能根本没有感觉到。
It’s fun to imagine the sat nav companies were all asleep at the cash register, completely ignoring all these new threats. e reality is that they were probably all watching the iPhone keynote and couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
有趣的是，这些卫星导航公司在收银机上都睡着了，完全忽略了所有这些新的威胁。现实是，他们大概都在看iPhone的主题，不敢相信他们看到了什么。
Customers don’t wait around for you to innovate. e world will move on, with or without you. What typically happens is that someone puts something out, and the incumbent just says, “Yeah, but who will use that?” And by the time they’ve decided to ght, it’s already a done deal.
客户不要等待您的创新。e世界将继续前进，有或没有你。通常情况下，有人会把东西放在外面，而现任人员只是说：“是的，但是谁会使用这个东西？”当他们已经决定了，这已经是一个完成的事情了。
The way this plays out typically is a new threat emerges and the incumbent typically dismisses it as a toy. A few months later when WhatsApp put out a press release saying they had reached 100,000 users the telcos probably laughed.
这种戏剧的方式通常会出现新的威胁，而任职者通常将其视为玩具。几个月后，当WhatsApp发布新闻稿时，他们已经达到10万用户，电信公司可能会笑。
Then at some point WhatsApp puts out a press release saying, “We have our 100 millionth user,” and the telcos think, “Oh.” By the time they decide to ght, it’s already a done deal, and there’s no turning back.
那么在某些时候，WhatsApp发布了一个新闻稿，说：“我们有我们的第一百万用户”，电信运营商认为，“哦，”当他们决定的时候，这已经是一个完成的交易了，没有回头。
The lesson is that all of these technologies and companies are intertwined. It wasn’t clear that a phone would decimate the mapping business, or that software would disrupt telecommunications businesses.
所有这些技术和公司都是交织在一起的。不清楚的是，手机会对地图业务进行抽奖，否则软件会破坏电信业务。
The question you have to consistently ask yourself as new things emerge every day is: “Does this new technology make it in any way cheaper, faster or easier for our customers to make progress in their lives?”
您一直以来一直认为自己是新事物每天出现的问题是：“这项新技术是否能以更便宜，更快，更容易的方式让客户在生活中取得进步？” Whenever you see something new, assess whether it makes a di erence to your customers, because if it does, they’ll start using it – and you’ll be left wondering how the ground moved beneath you. e very second you nd yourself moving slower than the industry, it’s game over.
每当你看到新的东西，都要评估它是否会对你的客户产生影响，因为如果这样做，他们就会开始使用它 - 而且你会不知道地面如何移动到你的身下。第二，你发现自己比行业变慢，这是游戏结束。 It’s hard to know what’s important to focus your attention on, but you should constantly question if someone is outpacing you using superior technology, speed, ease of use or any other factor that could make life better for the people out there using your products.
很难知道什么是重点关注您的注意力，但您应该不断质疑，如果有人超越您使用优秀的技术，速度，易用性或任何其他因素，可以使生活更好的人在那里使用您的产品。It’s important to decide if it’s relevant to your business to try and chase a new area, and risk ending up with a “jack of all trades” product. Ultimately you don’t want to be the one caught on camera laughing at something that’s about to take the world by storm.
重要的是要决定是否与您的业务相关，尝试追逐新的领域，并冒着“所有行业的杰克”产品的风险。最终你不想成为一个相机上的人，笑着要把暴风雨当作世界的东西。 Many people wonder why startup founders are so paranoid. It’s because once they’ve successfully created something that works, they want it to survive long term. So they’re constantly worried about what could be around the corner.
许多人想知道为什么创始人是如此偏执。这是因为一旦他们成功创造了一些有用的东西，他们希望它能够长期生存下去。所以他们一直在担心什么可能在拐角处。