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David and Goliath - How a start-up beats a giant!

Valle

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Apr 27, 2015
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Hello!

I'm 5000 dollars deep in the product development of an e-com store delivering flower bouquets!
I'm a fairly new entrepreneur but I have help from a mentor and business developer who also get financed by an innovation investor.
The business idea is basically starting an E-com store for flowers where people can order flowers secured in a proper box ensuring a cheap and safe delivery (Letterbox flowers).
This concept has been proven to work in many other countries like the UK but hasn't really been a thing here where I live yet.
I'm a scientific expert in plants by trade which has made product development easy and would make me the first on the market with this kind of solution and expertise.
So far so good... until now when I just found a multinational company from Holland that opened up their e-com store doing more or less exactly what I believed to be my USPs.
This company has only been active in my country for two months more or less. I guess this was bound to happen at some point but I was hoping to be first which is important when getting further finance from the innovation investor...

They are big and I am small, so my question is: How do I as a start-up with minimum finance of maybe 20 000 dollars compete with a multinational company?
Also, how do I continue to motivate an innovation investor when I'm no longer that unique?

Appreciate any thoughts from people with experience of facing big companies as a start-up
 
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100k

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Beachhead strategy.

Find a niche, be the BEST MOTHER F*ckING flower boy to that particular niche, bar NO MOTHER F*ckING BODY.

FORCE people to talk about you because your mother F*cking service is SOOO F*ckING AWESOME people HAVE TO talk about it.

Then expand to another sub-section in the flower niche and rinse and repeat until you are the mofo ppl recommend and think of when it comes to flowers.
 

Lyinx

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Oct 28, 2019
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Hello!

I'm 5000 dollars deep in the product development of an e-com store delivering flower bouquets!
I'm a fairly new entrepreneur but I have help from a mentor and business developer who also get financed by an innovation investor.
The business idea is basically starting an E-com store for flowers where people can order flowers secured in a proper box ensuring a cheap and safe delivery (Letterbox flowers).
This concept has been proven to work in many other countries like the UK but hasn't really been a thing here where I live yet.
I'm a scientific expert in plants by trade which has made product development easy and would make me the first on the market with this kind of solution and expertise.
So far so good... until now when I just found a multinational company from Holland that opened up their e-com store doing more or less exactly what I believed to be my USPs.
This company has only been active in my country for two months more or less. I guess this was bound to happen at some point but I was hoping to be first which is important when getting further finance from the innovation investor...

They are big and I am small, so my question is: How do I as a start-up with minimum finance of maybe 20 000 dollars compete with a multinational company?
Also, how do I continue to motivate an innovation investor when I'm no longer that unique?

Appreciate any thoughts from people with experience of facing big companies as a start-up
make it personal...
answer the phone... call them back... automated emails when it's close to their birthday (or would they like to add any other special dates/anniversary/etc...)?
 
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Lyinx

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Oct 28, 2019
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Lancaster County, PA
make it personal...
answer the phone... call them back... automated emails when it's close to their birthday (or would they like to add any other special dates/anniversary/etc...)?
there was a doctor who was special because he made it personal... and all he did... one phone call a few days before the procedure (did you have any questions about the procedure/plan/afterwards?) and one call afterwards (just wanted to make sure your're doing ok, did you have any questions while I'm on the phone)
might seem like much... but if you would have your secretary hand you a list each morning and you quickly follow up on them... could take 15 minutes to an hour each day... and it increases your return customer base
 

Valle

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Apr 27, 2015
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there was a doctor who was special because he made it personal... and all he did... one phone call a few days before the procedure (did you have any questions about the procedure/plan/afterwards?) and one call afterwards (just wanted to make sure your're doing ok, did you have any questions while I'm on the phone)
might seem like much... but if you would have your secretary hand you a list each morning and you quickly follow up on them... could take 15 minutes to an hour each day... and it increases your return customer base
Hmm, that's a good idea! I think it speaks a lot of the mentality that you can afford to have to your customers when still small, thank you
 

Lyinx

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Oct 28, 2019
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Hmm, that's a good idea! I think it speaks a lot of the mentality that you can afford to have to your customers when still small, thank you
there are two ways to become "large"
1 (the most common) sell more things at lower cost
2 (not so common) push the quality, improve the product, improve the customer service, and raise the price.

benefits?
method 1: you can retire (eventually) once you've trained a bunch of people.. the system will eventually need a reboot (it gets lazy) and you'll have to come in again and restart it
method 2: you don't get much time off... but you get good quality work and you get to work with your customers... raising the price allows you to do better/more quality things... keep it small... you can make just as much (or more) profit this way, but you won't easily be able to retire (unless you have one person come along and take it over, but then he/she will want most/all of the profits at that point
 
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