Last week I interviewed Anthony Foy, CEO of Workshare about his business and the growth in the online sharing and collaboration markets.
When researching Workshare the obvious message is the business can be best described as a Dropbox for enterprises.
It always pays to be cautious when comparing a business to a competitor as often the managers or founders don’t like mentioning marketplace rivals.
Frequently, it turns out the rival in the market helps you define what your service delivers.
A good example of this was a gay and lesbian dating service run by a pair of acquaintances.
Naturally the obvious comparison was with the Grindr app but the two founders – who we’ll call George and John – had completely different views about this.
George’s view was “don’t mention the G word” as Grindr was the feared rival while John’s view was that their opposition validated their market and actually made it easier for them to explain their business.
John’s view turns out to be that of Anthony Foy’s – that Dropbox actually makes it easier for Workshare to articulate its business.
Investors, customers and staff understand what Dropbox does so there’s no need to for Workshare to convince people there’s a demand for what they do or to explain exactly what their service does.
This has proved true for many successful businesses. Facebook needed Friendster and Myspace to prove the market for social media existed while Google had Yahoo! and Altavista to show there was a need for an online search engine.
Just because you aren’t first to the market doesn’t mean you won’t be successful. Sometimes your competitors are your greatest asset in helping the rest of the industry understand exactly what you do.