This year has been a though year not just for startups measures, but also anyone measures. With the market and economy badly hit and troubled by the on going Covid-19 condition, ultimately this has proved that no matter how much the innovation, the out of the box idea, and easing life features you brought, market will always be your biggest challenge and biggest competition.
If we talk about startups nowadays people will always assume startups with innovation and technology implementation to further push for efficiency. Despite that it is needs to be understood that the biggest startup impact towards current market is that it pushes for further innovation, it shows that the market is still craving for more innovation and new ideas, with ride hailing become the easiest example as how it transform the transportation industry and pushes for a more efficient ride hailing options compared to the traditional taxi and ojek.
It is needs to be understood that the market really craving for the innovation at this stage, so much so that most of the reason why startups these days won’t survive is because they are unable to bring the innovation the market needs, because they are to busy trying to compete and set their competitors as the milestone, put Uber in Indonesia for example, during their presence in Indonesia they are too busy trying to set dominance in the ride hailing in Indonesia by trying to implement their western country based strategy against local/regional company, which implement market based strategy, their failure to put market as their main competitor ultimately lead to the failure to adapt and innovate accordingly to the market needs.
As a startup founder you should really understand that although startup is supposedly be the disruptive power of the market, the market also in almost the same way worked as the disruptive power for you. Because as what startups has proven before, the market will never stop craving for innovation, there will always be new things/way we could optimize our daily needs. Instead of competing with your peers, if you want to survive you need to compete and fight the market.