Competitor went ~200 million IPO. We are growing at a faster rate than this competitor! Our costs are less than this competitor!
16 answers from the community
So do an IPO
OP here: Working on it; finishing series A now for growth.
Congratulations! Best of luck on your execution.
OP here: Thanks; I try to minimize 'luck' as much as possible on execution. I also execute 'just enough' for market validation and nothing more.
Its easy to grow fast when your current revenue is $1.
OP here: I expected a snide remark but left out revenue anyway. Would you still scoff at our $1M revenue run rate assuming we halt growth fully over the next 6 months for this year?
I sure can't hold a candle to you sir. Thanks for the clarification.
It's expected that as a smaller company your costs would be less than a large company and that you would grow at a faster rate than a large company. This is nothing special to brag about.
I could create a software company and grow at a 200% rate annually and keep my costs down to $30,000 but that doesn't make me anywhere near as good as Microsoft nor does it make it likely that I'd beat them.
OP here: You're full of presumptions. Let's retry as you likely missed my comment above because they are a minute apart. Would you still scoff at our $1M revenue run rate assuming we halt growth fully over the next 6 months for this year?
Also, both growth rate and costs are compared to the competitor when they started out and were small like us. Our model is different than this competitor and that's the reason for both less cost and better customer satisfaction that's leading to faster growth.
Initially we had 300%+ quarter over quarter growth (much higher if you look at month over month) but that's all bullshit because small numbers like that are well exaggerated due to small sales numbers. And no, we were not featured in TechCrunch or similar site. And no we don't spent money on social media, google ads, or SEO.
I'm the guy you're responding to. Do you mean a $1 million run rate for the entire year or for the month, quarter, etc.?
Regarding your point about comparing your growth rate to your competitor when they started out, that's also a mistake on your part since the market was likely smaller when they were starting out.
It's like how today mobile apps are expected to get $10+ million users before VCs become very interested in them whereas 8 years ago that figure would have been around $1 million users.
More people are using the internet, more people have smartphones, and more people are buying online than 5 years ago. Facebook took around 7 years to get to 500 million users but WhatsApp did it in around 2 years because they started out with a larger market.
Anyways, I think you're overconfident and should definitely stop drinking your own Kool-Aid. You're a tiny bug compared to the company you're targeting and yet you act like you're already better than them.
+100000
Haters gonna hate. Out out you demons of negativity. Be proud, if not you then who?
I'm not a hater; just telling him/her the truth. He or she seems waaay to arrogant. For only generating $1 million a year in revenue, to be talking so lightly about an established competitor who just had a $200 million IPO is very arrogant. It would be like some upstart software maker talking about how much better they are than Microsoft.
OP: But who has the better product? Depending on what you're selling, people might still prefer the pricier competitor. Plus, depending on how long they've been in the market ahead of you, your growth rate may not so out of orbit in comparison.
*may not seem so out of orbit
I'd guess that your IPO'd competitor is Zendesk.