NAME IT OR LOSE IT: What is "It"? and What are you aiminng to dominate?

"What have you invented?"

"What is this new market category you are aiming to dominate?"

Those are two of the biggest questions startup CEOs will be asked. You have to be able to answer them on the spot. Your responses are central to the formation of your unfair competitive advantage. Without them, you are like a cork in the proverbial startup ocean, rudderless, moving at the will of the waves, tossed to and fro.

Here is a fine example to get your thinking going:

After Edison invented the cylindrical talking playback device, others produced alternatives, some on disks. The public called all of them “talking machines.” All were expensive and unreliable players until Johnson invented a solution for Berliner’s wobbly rotating disk. They decided to call it a “phonograph”. The company they formed was Victor Talking Machine Co. They named their player the Victrola which became hugely popular. It’s icon was the fox terrier dog sitting with its head cocked to one side, listening to a phonograph. Johnson pioneered the mass production of entertainment. He transformed entertainment from events performed live for limited-sized audiences into today’s vast, multimedia industry. [From Investors Business Daily,  2008 March 4].

You need a similar story. The thing you have invented needs a name. The market segment you are competing in needs a name. Both have to be part of your exciting story about your quest to transform a vast market.

BOTTOM LINE: Try inserting your name for Johnson's and then substitute your company name and so on. Keep crafting until you get a story that works for your company. When you do, you'll be way ahead of your competitors and well on your way to becoming the leader and gorilla of a new market category. Like Amazon, Google and [put your company name here]. It is central to forming your unfair advantage.