When the big dogs of tech - call ‘em the FAANGs, or the ‘Gang of Four’ as the Post does here - are roaming free in the market, you might rightly worry they’ll snap up your startup, or underprice it out of existence, before you’re done with it.
But as Unbounce CTO Carl Schmidt notes, giant companies don’t just consume or starve out their smaller competitors. However inadvertently, they create new niches and opportunities that nimble SMEs can exploit.
Read Carl Schmidt on leveraging Big Tech’s machinery.
“The kill zone… isn’t necessarily a problem for everyone.
For one thing, Schmidt said, the tech giants create niches for smaller companies. No one would be crazy enough to take on Google by coming up with a better search engine, but its advertising machine creates all kinds of opportunities for companies to build digital marketing tools and complementary services.”
It’s hard to avoid a dinosaurs-and-mammals analogy here -- but however much Amazon may resemble a T. Rex, it’s not going extinct anytime soon. If you’re not looking to be acquired, it’s wise to look at the top of the tech food chain, and do something better, faster or smarter than the apex predators can. As Stephen Ufford notes, “entrepreneurs can be complementary to Big Tech in the short term, while growing into a disruptive company in the long run.”