Evaluating Competition and Appropriately Positioning Your Company to Win

What is one of the biggest red flags for an investor? Hearing an entrepreneur/startup say they don’t have competition. Every startup has competition, regardless of product, service, and/or industry. While acknowledging you have competition is the first step, startups must also find a way to stick out from the crowd - and simply declaring your startup is the “best”, won’t cut it. To succeed, you need to have concrete evidence to back up why your startup is better than the other companies in the market and articulate your competitive advantage flawlessly.

In this webinar, we will discuss:

1. how to research competition specific to all aspects of a business especially if the product does several different things and thus has several competitors for each “function”

2. how to articulate that a company solves the problem better than the competitors (being cheaper isn’t a competitive advantage!)

If you find this interesting, you might also enjoy Demystifying Market Size - What Entrepreneurs Need to Know on May 25! Register now!

Speakers:

Cy Megnin (Moderator)

Cy Megnin has been an entrepreneur, founder and advisor for the past two decades. Past companies include Intel Capital portfolio company PrepFlash, an AI company that uses NLP to automatically create flashcards from any content, and CloudCoreo, a configuration management company that garnered investment from Microsoft and ultimately sold to VMware. Cy was in the 2014 class of "Forty Under 40" for Professional Remodeler Magazine at the helm of the long-running real estate investment firm OCPS and was twice-featured on TLC’s hit TV show “Flip That House”. He is currently back in his hometown of Bloomington, IN with his wife Andrea and son Jack working for Elevate Ventures as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence after spending the last 15 years in Austin, Seattle and the Bay area. He has a degree in Economics from Indiana University and an MBA from Baylor University, where he is an executive judge for their annual MBA Ethics competition.

Mike Kelly

Mike is a co-founder and Managing Partner at DeveloperTown (a digital product development firm), a co-founder of FullStack (a PEO focused on early-stage ventures), the founder of Tenant Tracker (a commercial real estate SaaS product-company), the founder of Startup Competitors (a SaaS company focused on competitive market research) and host of the Startup Competitors podcast, and a co-founder of Start Something Ventures (a midwest-based angel investment syndicate). Mike is an advisor and board member at several early-stage startups, is on the Founders Bench for the Heritage Group Accelerator, is an advisor at the Entrepreneurship Center in Nashville TN, and is a mentor for the Founders Institute program in Chicago IL. And to fill his nights and weekends, he also has a hobby farm.

Karen Wurster

Karen Wurster is Chief Executive Office at Adipo Therapeutics, a startup biotech company developing new treatments that transform energy storing white fat to energy burning brown fat to treat obesity related diseases. Karen is an experienced pharmaceutical executive with over 25 years of developing, launching and commercializing products for the global market including the launch of multiple block buster treatments for diabetes. Karen has a passion for developing a deep understanding of customer needs, and applying the customer understanding to optimize product value through the development process. Karen has worked previously at Eli Lilly and Company, and consulted for a wide range of pharmaceutical companies including Intarcia, Mankind, and UCB. Karen has a B.S. in Biochemistry from Indiana University, and an M.B.A. from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.

Ravi Bhatt

Ravi Bhatt is the founder and CEO of Branchfire. Over 3 million people globally use the company’s software products. Branchfire’s core product, iAnnotate, has helped digitally transform old paper-based processes at the world’s largest banks, law firms, government agencies, and even Hollywood studios. As an investor, advisor, and team leader, Ravi has found innovative ways to apply his background in law, business, and technology. Ravi’s entrepreneurial journey has led him to successfully (and unsuccessfully) bootstrap several businesses — an approach that fundamentally shapes his thinking about angel investing. He frequently teaches and speaks on topics including product design, communication strategy, and data visualization. A founding member of a tech incubator in Chicago, Ravi’s passion is helping new entrepreneurs walk the early steps of starting a business.Prior to getting pulled into the world of startups, Ravi advised clients in complex, high-stakes litigation by developing winning communication strategies. Ravi holds a J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. He completed his undergraduate studies in cognitive science and computer science at Indiana University. Ravi is admitted to the Illinois Bar.