Disrupting the Disrupters – It’s Coming and What It Could Look Like

Did you ever think Uber would end? Is it even possible after the hit lyric “Uber Everywhere”?

There are companies that are considered disrupters – Uber being one of them. They have a taxi service but they don’t have vehicles. AirBnB is the largest real estate provider without owning any real estate.

We are in a world where entrepreneurship is encouraged. These disrupters must also watch their backs. Because disruptors can get disrupted.

Imagine for a second that GM, Tesla, and Waymo decided to join forces and totally kill Uber. They are all developing self-driving models so why would we have a need for a company like Uber? Especially when they are in tons of legal turmoil – things aren’t looking good. Today, a company’s life span is about 10-15 years — unlike the Kodak years of being able to last 100 + years.

Most companies are seeking to disrupt their market but there’s a lesson here: even the big boys are getting crushed.

Just like any other, business partnerships are the way to develop recurring business. We want to be able to do more with less – so leveraging your partners can help you get further quicker than looking at them like competitors. In my example, above, if those three powerhouses joined forces and looked pass the “competition” ring – then they would defeat Uber and win!

One of the startups I worked with was in the photography space. They built a phone case for enthusiasts who loved taking polaroids without having any extra equipment. It would be a case on your phone and you can snap right then and there. They were doing good for a while and disruptive at that.

However, when I was working with the CEO, he was very reluctant to see his competitors as alliances. He wanted to push forward with his thoughts about where the company would go without working in partnerships with other companies and competitors. This made it tough to reach the target audience because all these other companies had legitimate lists built except for this company. We could have leveraged their lists and gained the reach we needed to sell our product in bulk.

These opportunities are killed with ego and the inability to see through partnerships and the benefits.

At first I thought it was my education process and how unpersuasive it was, but as I started working with the startup I realized that it was more than that. The company culture had a lot of politics which also led them down a path of failure because they were not able to focus on the company goals. It seemed like gossiping came before company goals.

Get the hint here and start building partnerships with companies who do similar things as you do because in the end you will be the monster company that disrupts the disrupter. It’s not only about your startup profit — and here’s why startup profits are like U2.