Pick on someone your own size

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 - Gertjan Filarski

A week ago I presented our new - and soon to be announced - plans. The inevitable question came up: "...Are you sure? We believe you guys can build this, but you are going to meet some stiff competition... Big Tech sized competition..."

I think that is fantastic.

Just how big is big?

As a startup you can pick your competition. Are you going to enter an arena with literally hundreds, if not thousands, of other equally small hopefuls? Duke it out in a free-for-all brawl to see who gets out on top and takes funding? Or would you rather take on a single known quantity like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook or Apple? An entity that is so big that it cannot hide?

Try keeping a secret when the value of your company is twice or three times the size of the Dutch economy. Microsoft for example is valued at $1.8 trillion dollars in 2021. Compare that to a GDP of $907 billion for the Netherlands. And Apple? That's actually the 8th economy in the world behind the US, China, India, France, Germany, the UK and Japan. I mean, these entities are so gigantic that they constantly need to publish news, figures, strategies and directions. Observing and analysing them is a market entirely by itself. Tons of journalists and media companies make money by doing nothing other than observing their every move.

As an entrepreneur I consider it an advantage if I can keep taps on my main competitor by simply reading the news.

No peers

Besides a huge information advantage, taking on a mammoth has other benefits. Nobody else is there. It is considered one of those bad-ideas-by-default. It seems so obvious that hardly anyone dares going there. Great! That allows me to fully focus my attention and dedicate all my resources to the task. I have been in too many organizations and departments who constantly changed tack and altered their course - because of the competition. There were so many competitors that everything was always moving. That is tedious. As a startup you have (very) limited resources. Focus is crucial to get anything done.

Fourdays is, right now, only me and Jauco. We are nothing more than two guys who combined average about 80 to 100 working hours per week. And yes, I know that in startup culture some boast that they do 80 to 100 hours all by themselves. I've been there. But the benefits don't keep up with the costs. When your resources are scarce, every step counts. Instead of fighting an arena of equals, I find it easier to maintain focus when chipping away market share in the shadow of a single colossus,

Too small to notice

I won't pretend we will be noticed. Not now - likely not ever. It's funny how carefully I write this blog to avoid mentioning which of the Big 5 we have in our cross hairs. But let's face it, even if I would write right here and now that we are going after Amazon, and would publish it in an "official" press release printed in neon-lights... the chances that anyone remotely powerful looks at it are absolutely zero. And - for the sake of argument - if some assistant-vice-president-at-the-office-of-the-secondary-vice-president-of-book-covers at Amazon were to read it, it would not register. We are too inconsequentially small in comparison.

And that's a good thing. In the story of Goliath - David is out to kill him. But we have no such ambition with Fourdays. I just want a fragment of the massive amount of income this company generates. A Facebook-like company needs a constant flow of cash to meet the needs of its different interests and shareholders. We are small and easily satisfied (in comparison).

If I can't beat Goliath with a stone - I'd be more than happy to spend my career getting things done in its shadow.

It's nothing personal

Many people have big opinions about Big Tech corporations. The most outspoken are usually not very flattering. I find it rarely beneficial to generalize and treat organizations (or people) as collective groups. We need to look at them as individuals. Apple and Facebook are as different as the United States and China are different.

I have no principled qualms with any large company and certainly did not make this choice out of activism. To quote the best management-book-turned-film ever: it is strictly business Sonny.

Badge of Honour

Once, during a management meeting at the Royal Netherlands Academy in Amsterdam, I was told that I had "an Anglo-American ambition" - and most academics do not mean that as a compliment :) I took it as a badge of honour. Although the underdog metaphor is used and abused in both the UK and the US, it appeals to me enormously. Truth be told, it is one of the most attractive reasons for punching above my weight. Whether I succeed or fail: the legendary going against the odds and making things work, simply makes for a much better story.

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