Find the weaknesses and sell expensively

One thing many startup entrepreneurs have used over and over again is the “find the bigger corporations weaknesses and create a solution for it, then use those weaknesses against the big corporation and have them notice it”. Why is this good?

Big corporations, especially big publicly listed companies is owned by big financial institutions (big chunks of these companies at least). These institutions hate losing money. The managers running these companies hate losing their job because they upset these financial institutions.

If you threaten their market position, then of course they want to either crush you or buy you out quickly as possible. Bankruptcy is never an option.

If you avoid getting bankrupted, then you can make serious money. I have never done this myself, but believe me, I have my plots:). I have actually started a plan yesterday.

There is a little telecom company in Sweden with close to nil idea of how bad their marketing is. They have this new home movie system (a little bit like TIVO wannabe in fact). The thing is, they don’t see how easilly I can eliminate them by just giving away the home movie system for free (no matter how expensive this might be upfront it still pays of when you, at the time of the give away, have people sign up on long term membership agreements).

Of course, this company do not know where I can beat them. They seem totally dumbfunded about it.

So this is the plot:

1) Either they take me in and make me revamp their marketing plan and give me 50% of all the turnover above the 2008 year revenue level OR

2) I will start my own company with a slightly different system (to avoid getting IP law problems) and do as I mentioned above. Give away the system for free and also have people sign up on long term agreements and make the money back that way (and then keep making money by renewed agreements).

And if I do choose choice number 2, then this telecom company will either be in need of closing up shop, transform to compete with my startup or buy me out for a rather hefty price. Pretty easy really. Isn’t business lovely:)?