What Does it Take to go up Against Billion-Dollar Brands? 
Tags: startup, motivation
Published: 2020-12-16 22:57:10

I’m working on a project that has me more excited than I’ve been in a while. My team and I are building a tool that can power millions of businesses and even individual projects on a monthly basis. 

With that kind of reach comes competition stiffer than anything I could’ve imagined. Venture capitalists have dropped hundreds of millions to capture the market. There are entrenched players that get tens of millions of visitors every month. 

The interesting part is that the market is expanding every single day. It’s one of the industries that have been impacted positively by Covid-19. Since people can’t meet in person, they use these kinds of tools to continue working. 

Even though we have a vaccine now, adoption won’t slow down because people finally realize how simple these tools make their life. 

What am I talking about? 

Document management. Specifically, eSigning and PDF document management. I know, I’m late to the party and I’m fine with that. My newest side project – [UsefulPDF](https://usefulpdf.com) – isn’t designed to unlock a billion-dollar valuation in 4 years. 

##Our approach to dealing with rich competitors

Early on, we realized that we faced stiff competition. That was only corroborated when I dug into the market a bit deeper and understood what the competition was doing. 

Two of our largest competitors in one area we tackle gets 100 million visitors a month and about 2X that in page views. Another one of our competitors was making $24 million a year and wasn’t even profitable. 

Tools like DocuSign are revenue unicorns (making over a billion dollars a year), publicly traded, and have some of the brightest minds in the world. They have the resources to crush or out develop any competitor. 

For some, I’m painting a dreary picture. This makes me smile. 
Why? 

In my mind, nothing could be more fun than duking it out against Goliath – right? 

That was a joke. 

On a more serious note, we’re unphased because we’re not starting out with the intention of building a unicorn. That would be a nice fringe benefit though. 

We’re out to build a company that will make us personally successful and doesn’t force us to compromise with our moral compass. 

It’s not growth at all costs. 

It’s steady growth over the course of a decade. It’s the same approach our competitors with 100 million visitors a month took. 
It was a slog at first then the flywheel started to kick in. 

Each win built on the last one incrementally until there was nothing that could stop them (read the Slight Edge to get a better understanding of this process). Currently, they’re among the largest websites in the world and have translated their application into dozens of languages. 

It took them over a decade. 

Instead of failing fast and often, we’re building tools - [like this one](https://usefulpdf.com/signature-creator)-that will stand up to the rigors of the real world. We don’t mind if it takes us multiple development cycles to push out our products. 
The only way we can compete with our super rich competitors is through excellence. 

Do you have a small store that you visit often? It may not have as many options as the local Walmart but you keep going back over and over. You tell your friends about it. If people are visiting from out of town, you recommend it. 

Why do you think that is? 

More than likely, it’s because they’re good at what they do. They don’t do everything – not by a long shot. But they take pride in everything they produce or sell and that pride shows in the presentation, the quality, and the commitment to service. 
You simply don’t get that from a billion-dollar company. 

Maybe, one day, we’ll be in the ranks of unicorns. If that happens cool. Today, right now, we’re focused on delivering excellence one step at a time. 

I hope you’ll join us on this journey