Don’t attack head on -- practice the art of war!
Sun Tzu in the “Art of War” argues the best route to victory is to use deception, speed and to attack the enemy’s weakness.
If Data Domain went after a Gorilla (Giant Company) head on the response would have been vigorous. In fact, we deceived the Gorilla that we were not competitive for a while…then we outflanked and attacked with a highly trained group of warriors and truly awesome technology.
As an example of effective deception – Data Domain was in many of the formalized partner programs of our competitors and attended their user events – these events became our best source of leads!
If going head on against a highly functioning Gorilla my advice is to think of all the ways that you can win…can you survive on less margin? Can you reach the client in a new way – i.e. Dell to Compaq (if you can remember that far back).
Remember the big guys have to support years of code and deployed systems – these systems are hard to change. Let that be your calling – your reason to exist. They are also not in the business to replace the “cash cow” of the product line.
Your job if you decide to go after the cash cow is to develop a technology angle that makes the existing solutions look obsolete or at best incomplete. Incremental is ok…but why not start a revolution.
Our approach – we found a flank. We attacked in the underbelly of the beast while they thought we were just a cuddly little teddy bear. By the time they woke up we had created a new orifice. That is why you are in a start up.
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