Reaction versus Leadership
In the world of tech start-ups, the gap between reacting to what your competition does and your current market leadership is often measured in a matter of months. Many examples abound – Facebook.com versus Friendster.com/mySpace.com, Mint.com versus Intuit…
A great team is one that can execute fast and think creatively at the same time.
On 25th Jan 2011, Amazon announced a new SES product which threatens to doom Mailchimp’s business in one fell swoop. Mailchimp is a successful and bootstrapped tech start-up which has been around since 2001! They are a clear leader in the SaaS mail services space.
Obviously, there’s a reason why they have lasted so long and thrived in the absence of venture money. Within one week, on 2nd Feb, Mailchimp’s founder and CEO, Ben Chestnut and team have created a new product that integrates with Amazon’s SES in a creative and clever manner. Talk about co-competition!
Every single start-up team will produce beautiful slide decks illustrating how great their team is and how experienced their founding members are in their process to solicit investments.
But no words, pictures or slide decks can replace real action, clear thinking and elegant reactions to an ever changing market dynamics.
This is what team work and creative product leadership is all about. My respect.
Cross-posted on: Odeon Blogs
