Story of a Startup!

He was a smart developer. He teamed up with his smart MBA friend and couple of other IT guys to create a trailblazing product in the e-commerce domain. They planned to launch the portal on 1^st of January 2014. Even before their release, they created a lot of buzz in the market, although analysts doubted their success. Some even wrote them off. The start-up started well and got a lot of investors interested but soon it began losing its momentum. They started committing goof ups everyday. The goof ups soon turned into blunders. Investors started getting pissed and some even threatened to cancel the funding. Meanwhile lot of founding members quit as they weren’t happy with the way the start-up was going. 

The MBA guy who led the entire operation started smelling foul play and began wailing. He complained that the current market leaders are trying to topple his start-up. The smart developer even said that one of the current market leaders in the e-commerce domain called him on 31st of December 2013 and tried to hire him at fat pay package so that the new start-up gets toppled. However he refused and went ahead with the start-up. The MBA chap has now stopped working and is planning to do a protest outside the residence of the market leader’s COO. The investors are even more pissed. The old loyal subscribers of the market leader are having a good laugh about the new start-up and its weird strategies. The new subscribers of the start-up are confused, some have switched loyalties already.

 

I tried analyzing the scenario. This fails on a number of points:

 

1. No market leader offers to topple a new start-up unless the latter is proved as a competition to it
2. There should be proofs to justify that there have been unfair advances by the competitors
3. One shouldn’t go to the public domain without facts and/or justifications
4. Competition should always be in the priority list but work should always top that list
5. Disgust should be expressed by a constitutional channel or through a regulatory authority
6. Strategy should keep evolving or else the subscribers get bored
7. Competitors should stay away from mudslinging as it defames the entire domain
8. The core agenda of a company should always remain intact
9. The investors and their interests should always be respected
10. The company should strive to increase its subscriber base and not lose the existing subscriber base

 

Picture Courtesy: – www.startupplays.com