What Secrets & Tricks Can STARTUPS Learn From GIANTS?

Prepare to have your mind blown in 3… 2… 1…

A. DID YOU KNOW…

There are MANY business benefits — shared resources, economies of scale, etc. — as well as many sneaky reasons they’d prefer we not know…

Enterprise owns both National and Alamo… ??
Avis owns Budget, Payless, and Zipcar… ??
Hertz owns Dollar and Thrifty… ??

“I just booked a flight… Oh, cool, here are 3 different ads for 3 different rental car companies…”

WRONG!

This is ONE ad spot — disguising itself as three ads!

B. QUESTION:

What do all of these products have in common?

ANSWER:

Although they might seem unrelated… THEY ARE (surprisingly?) ALL SOLD ON THE SAME WEBSITE(S)!

They are ALL sold on Target.com…
They are ALL sold on Walmart.com…
They are ALL sold on Amazon.com…

… and, therefore, in each case, the companies each benefit from shared resources, economies of scale, and a cross-promotional network effect …

(Presumably — ONE E-Commerce Site? ONE Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System? ONE Inventory Management System? ONE Accounting Team? ONE Legal Team? ONE Digital Marketing Team? ONE of almost everything?!?)

C. THINK ABOUT THIS…

FACT: *Most Startups will fail if they try to launch MULTIPLE products, MULTIPLE services, MULTIPLE business units with MULTIPLE revenue streams.

[We actually agree! This is definitely true!
HOWEVER…]

MISGUIDED CONCLUSION (in most startup communities)
“Therefore, Entrepreneurs must have LASER-FOCUS and it is a MISTAKE for Entrepreneurs / Startups to attempt the whole “Multiple Eggs / Multiple Baskets” thing…”

WRONG!!!

MORE RELEVANT than the Fact Above is THIS:
*MOST Startups will fail… PERIOD!
[Whether they attempt ONE product/service or FIVE products/services or ELEVENTY-SLEVEN products/services!]

Correlation vs. Causation gets mixed up (or is not even considered) so unbelievably-often — particularly when people try to ascertain “best practices” by establishing reasons WHY startups/entrepreneurs have EITHER failed OR succeeded!

I always see photos of SAD people sitting in front of BRICK WALLS.
Therefore, I can only conclude:
BRICK WALLS MUST MAKE PEOPLE SAD.

Shared Resources, Economies of Scale, and “Multiple Eggs in Multiple Baskets” yield so many benefits for the biggest/best companies in the world, but such strategies are so rarely incorporated into early-stage / idea-stage startups…

Did you know that “Google Maps” and “Waze” are both owned by the same company? What about “Google Play Movies & TV” and “YouTube”? What about “Hangouts” & “Hangouts Chat” and “Gchat” and “Google Talk” and “Google Voice” and “Google Allo” and “Google Duo” and… and it’s not just Google that does this. Perhaps more well-known is that Facebook owns Instagram — and Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp and… And of course Amazon owns Fleventy-Sleven businesses as well — including seemingly unrelated business like Whole Foods!

There are countless other examples out there where the GIANTS incorporate this thinking — and obviously there are some HUGE differences between YOUR STARTUP and some of the biggest companies in the world! — BUT, it is still a mistake to think that some of these practices/strategies can’t be implemented (on an obviously smaller scale) within STARTUPS to derive similar efficiencies (albeit, again, on an obviously smaller scale)

Let’s DISCUSS & DEBATE all of the above (and more!)

(And Then… LET’S DO SOME AMAZING THINGS!)

NOTE: Please, PLEASE, PLEASE ask me to elaborate or clarify anything that isn’t clear! I’m admittedly super-A.D.D., I don’t always proof-read or complete my thoughts so I might occassionally leave you asking “Wait, so what’s your point?” or “Yeah, but Amazon and Google and Facebook have nothing to do with me and my startup…”

P.S.

JOIN US — ReThinkingStartups.com & TheWhateverNetwork.com — as we build COMPANIES, comprised of MANY PRODUCTS (benefiting from shared resources, economies of scale, and a cross-promotional network effect)