Sorry but it’s not about Uber dear corporations. It’s about mosquitoes.
In the last few weeks a slide has been circulating the Internet supposedly proving that Uber is the largest taxi corporation in the world that doesn’t own a single taxi, AirBnB is the largest rental marketplace without a single property, and Skype is the largest Telco without an appropriate infrastructure.
That’s interesting,
but it doesn’t tell the story of what’s going on in the branches and sectors of the industry, all caused by start-ups.
It’s not about this one start-up that will emerge in the banking industry and start blowing up banks. One that will end them.
It’s not about this one start-up that will emerge and put the petrol companies, the energy providers, the diet supplement providers, or insurance companies out of business.
The point is in the mosquitoes, located in coworking spaces, getting some internet connection, and creating steroids high energy. In today’s world of innovation important organisms are those which can grow rapidly, quickly verify the sense of their market existence (market fit). It’s about the couple, the dozen, or the couple dozen that found the idea to operate, verified it on the market, sealed their business model. A quick commercialization allowed them to survive, and now the real rollercoaster begins.
In the picture above you can see a bank (random example), and a swarm of mosquitoes (startups) which settled on it. The swarm is trying to stick its offer in between the bank’s client and the bank itself, by sucking small bits of the value chain which the bank has been meticulously building for dozens of years. Each service of the bank is under pressure from startups that are trying to provide values to the client in other ways (better UI, lower costs, consumption based pricing, peer-to-peer based activity, etc.)
As for the branches…
Parallel pressure is being created in whole branches and sectors. The pressing swarms of startups are changing the power balance in the branches. Slowly. Drudgingly. These changes are stimulated by the speed of business model verification — an indispensable feature of startups, but also access to VC capital, seed, and angel.
It’s not about some Uber, AirBnB, or Skype having the biggest influence on branches and sectors. The point is that a swarm of startups collectively exerts effective pressure.
What can the corporations do?
Tame the mosquitoes.
Cooperate with them.
Together create a better offer in value chain.
They cannot remain indifferent or claim nothing is going on.
