#3 of seven lessons for startups from Intuit
3) Your competitor is not other companies, but the way that things are done now. Forty-six companies sold accounting packages at the time Quicken entered the market. But Scott Cook found that Intuit’s real competitor was paper and pencil. None of the other packages could balance a checkbook faster than could be done by hand. That was the real challenge that Quicken faced – not competitors.
Sigh!
Nothing’s changed.
Even today, I am constantly trying to compete with pen & paper (or, in a few instances, with MS Excel) used by my customers.
Read the article titled Seven Startup Lessons from Intuit.
5 Aug 2007 at 2:34 am
Nice link. Is foundread on your blogroll?
5 Aug 2007 at 10:30 am
It is on my google reader’s blogroll, just not on the links on this page.