What is your unfair advantage?

Mukhtar Mohamoud
23 replies
I'm asking this in the context of your startup / newsletter / business. A lot of new founders (like myself) will often spiral into focussing too much on the disadvantages we may have but we often overlook the small advantages we have over others. For myself, I'm a member of a community called @SomalisinTech, this group is incredibly supportive and engaging. I feel like it's my 'unfair advantage' as a founder. This among other small advantages. So, I pose the question to you, what's your unfair advantage?

Replies

Jan-Joachim Müller
I am not sure in wheather it is an unfair advantage, but I am rather technically adept and as long as my business https://www.thebaite.com tries to apply artificial intelligence/machine learning and NLP to every day problems, I can code everything myself. So that would give me an unfair price advantage over the competition, but it does not feel like a huge advantage. Therefore I am not quite sure, but I guess this would count as an advantange.
Mukhtar Mohamoud
Anything that helps your business and gives you an up against the others is an advantage for sure! Thanks for sharing :)
Sune B. Thorsen
My unfair advantage is that I have the support of a lovely community of mobile gamers on Reddit (r/AndroidGaming and r/iosgaming). I've been an active part of those communities since 2017, posting weekly on there. It's what led me to start developing what I'm currently working on; a discovery platform for actual great mobile games. I think really diving into a community you're passionate about is the best way to get an unfair advantage. But don't do so to sell things to them. Do it even before you have gotten an idea for your next project/product. You'll often find that every community has an issue that could use a product / solution :)
Mukhtar Mohamoud
@sunebthorsen I love that! I'm in a similar position and found that being a 'natural' member of a community is a huge help indeed!
Sune B. Thorsen
@sunebthorsen @mukhtarmohamoud Nice! Yeah, it makes all the difference. Here's to grassroot projects :)
Speaking baguette 🇫🇷 & english, a natural advantage which give us more customers.
Mukhtar Mohamoud
@jacquelinclem I wish I could speak Baguette too! But you're right, language is a HUGE advantage for sure.
Amit Tank
Inbound and Outbound prospecting, export of guestlist to any CRM, Dashboard view of meetings and more check : https://joinpigeon.com
Andre
Being a designer who codes.
Daniel Sperling-Horowitz
Cost structure, ability and willingess to rapidly iterate. Encoded into the company's DNA by the founders.
Rob Frierson
I guess my unfair advantage is that I created a powerful tool that allows me to quickly and easily create incredible custom-built websites for small businesses at a low cost. I'm pretty much breaking all of the website design & hosting rules by offering my small business websites at such low prices that I've actually gotten threats from competitors to tell me to raise my prices "or else!". I've just really got it down to a science, and I do it honestly and fairly, and at a low price (because I'm not a greedy giant corporate machine! See my website plans that start at just $35 a month for a completely unlimited everything website at https://www.IWANTAWEBSITE.com
Natalie Furness
My unfair advantage is Dyslexia. For many years I thought I was at a disadvantage for being different. Society seems to label dyslexics so negatively without realising the superpowers that it brings, from visualisation, engineering, creativity, critical thinking and ability to build links between concepts that seem unrelated to others. I am thankful to have been blessed with neurodiversity.
Mukhtar Mohamoud
@natalie_furn I love that! We don't have to look far to see famous examples of successful people who have dyslexia. Richard Branson might be the most famous one!
Natalie Furness
@natalie_furn @mukhtarmohamoud yes also Ford was a dyslexic, so is Lewis Hamilton. Einstein was also rumoured to have dyslexia. 😉
JohanDT
Our Co-Founder is a coach and have a podcasts growthisland.io focusing on personal growth and wellbeing - that is effectively used alongside our startup mental health app:
Abhishek Singh
It could be: - A large and passionate community (offline/online) - Network Effects & Personalisation - Tons of Funding/Track record of huge achievements in a highly relevant field - Exclusive partnerships that others can't get access to The list goes on, but unfair advantage should be something which very few can imitate and gives you a nice head start over your competition. For us personally, we are currently building our unfair advantages with the above principles in mind :)
Cater erol
I have no problem with it because its working fine with my store. You can see here https://tcl365.ie/
George Oliveira
We developed our own tech at https://nuacom.ie so we don't have to rely or depend on others.