Is Your Startup or Business Having Gaps or Voids?

Most of the startup entrepreneurs or the owners of small businesses are too deeply engrossed in routine firefight i.e. handling their operations, people, customers, channel partners, or escalations. As a result, they most often overlook the prevailing gaps or voids in their business model or even in their products or services!

And their smart and agile competitors quickly take advantage of such gaps or voids, bring in the innovation, and almost overnight take away a huge chunk of their business, almost derailing even the established players in the market!

In India, we've seen a live example of, how Reliance Jio completely disrupted the telecom industry by introducing 4G and 6 months free subscription. Today, Reliance Jio is the No.1 telecom service provider, while Vodafone-Idea, which (like Airtel) was caught off guard, it  didn't really adapted well to it, and is now at near bankrupt situation!

How my small query (discovery) shocked an Client, almost shattering their dreams?

A client had hired my services to create an Pitch Deck for them. And, usually I've detailed discussions with the entire foundation team, on each aspect of the pitch. And, when we reached on their "Business Model", founders passionately spoke about their key competitive advantage against their well established large competitors in that market, and how it garnered them large deals, from some of the top BFSI brands in the country.

Now, Investors always like to hear from startups about their key differentiation against both their established competitors and even the new or alternative service providers!

Here's an brief insight on how your business could be sitting on a prevailing mine field, read "How Amazon will dominate any market"?

Note, our discussion was truly engaging till this time ... until I realized they had a small but an critical gap or void in this very key differentiation, which any new entrant or even eCommerce sites can easily take advantage of. So, when I queried the founders about this potential gap, which can threaten their very existence, if not early but in the next 1-2 years?

It was like I had dropped a bomb in the meeting, I could easily see the scared faces of founders. Being an advisor, it's often hard to share or talk about my clients weakenesses, but at the end of it, at least my clients won't have to pay a huge or substantial price later on. So, they asked me for some time to really ponder on this.

Next day, I messaged them explaining "how they should be reviewing their entire business model to assess and mitigate such gaps or voids", which could be critical for their own business and from the Investors' stand point.

Note the Investors are seasoned professionals, who assess the startups from a birds eye view to even minute details, on each aspects of these prospective investees.

So, when was the last time, you reviewed your Startup or Business, to see if there are any gaps or voids?

Need help, ask for a confidential 30 minutes free assessment in any 1 area, which is hampering your business!