Competition and strategy are subjects of endless depth and interest, and sometimes a good presentation on strategy is as much about leaving things out as including them. In this article the core features that a presentation and data room need are listed, and then if your company or interest require more, the other articles in this section will provide that.
Who Are They?
Name the large incumbents in your market and provide their approximate market share, revenues and profits if possible. Mention any of the larger contracts they have, well-known or important employees or influencers who support them, and then try to learn their structure and its history.
If the incumbents were all spin-offs from massive listed companies like GSK, and began life with tens of millions of pounds and a ready-formed team of experts, there may be cause for worry that you are hoping to break into the market with a £1m raise.
The market share spread is interesting. If a few companies hold a lot of market share, creating something close to an oligopoly, then there will be huge barriers to entry (focused around economies of scale) related to taking them on directly. However, there may be dissatisfied customers who are not enjoying the standardised service larger companies sometimes impose on everyone.
Meanwhile, a market in which no-one has more than 5-10% market share is very competitive and will usually have lower profitability as a result. If you have something that lowers costs, maybe selling it to all of them- knowing they’re in a rat race- is a better plan than joining the race yourself? As they say, in a gold rush, the guaranteed way to make money is by selling shovels.
Niches
Then identify which niche each main player has taken. At first glance it often looks like they all do the same thing, but even going on their website homepage will often show you the different message they are trying to get across.
Coca Cola and Pepsi both seem pretty similar, but actually they fight with a different brand each. Coca Cola is about emotions and community, whereas Pepsi is about being cool, youthful, teenage and sporty. Prosocial v antisocial, almost. Look at the screen shots of their website.
But as a market insider, you know if those companies are really serving their customers in the way they claim to be, inside your market. Who are they actually selling to, and how, and does that tie in with the branding? If not, you may have an opportunity.
Resources
Now you can tie the success or failure of each competitor to their niche. The main issue is whether their core resources aligned with the niche they were trying to occupy in the market. If Pepsi wants the younger crowd, would an old cricketer or young popstar be a more aligned influencer?
Different resources might be access to large amounts of capital, a strong patent and IP suite, a valuable brand, a single segment within the market, or anything else. And the implicit question is what your resource is, what your niche is, and whether you have them aligned.
Failure
Having analysed the success or failure of each competitor in detail, it is worth zooming out one level and asking why, with all that money and all those clever people between them, the competitors as a group have not solved for the market flaw that you have identified. Spend some time on this.
Differentiation
Having meaningfully identified what everyone else is not doing, it should be easy for you to explain your core difference in one line only. “They all failed because they did not do X, therefore I shall succeed because I will”, or something like that.
And then it is helpful to go through the various points on which competitors can differentiate themselves from one another, and explain where you differ and where you don’t.
- Product
- Customer
- UX
- Technology
- Price
- Channels
- Structure
- Market
- Value Chain
- Etc.
End State
This brings us to the last three steps. Once the above has all happened and you have successfully launched and gained the market share you projected, it is worth describing how the world will look. Be clear about where your market share came from; did you grow the pie or take someone else’s share, and if so, whose exactly?
That leads to an obvious next step; the competition will respond somehow, rather than watch you take their revenues, so describe their likely reactions.
And finally, explain how you will survive those reactions by the competitors; what is the moat that will protect you, how is your plan defensible?