Launching a successful start-up is not easy. From competing with other industry giants in your sector and trying to showcase what makes your business different, to phases of growing pains and having the ability to adapt to changes in the market. There are a lot of moving parts to building a new and successful business in a competitive landscape.

A competitive environment

The tech, software and IT industries are arguably among the fiercest when it comes to measuring up against the competition.

In all areas, whether it’s product development or finding and managing to hire the brightest talent, bigger and longer established players are always going to have access to more resources to put behind any initiative, so being agile and prepared to adapt strategies based on changes in the competitive landscape is absolutely key to driving success – especially early on.

In my experience, this starts with understanding your market and target customer. For instance, while we serve the IT industry first and foremost, there are several markets our target customers occupy that must also be taken into account when it comes to knowing what we stand for as a business, and therefore what makes us different to the competition.

While we know that IT professionals will understand the intricacies of how to use complex software, the average person working in for example the creative industry might not be as closely versed in the technicalities, but still has a requirement to collaborate with other people on multiple devices via remote desktop software at work.

This has meant that our product development team has been laser focused on ensuring that AnyDesk’s software is simple to use and not bogged down by (unnecessarily) complicated features, while maintain the high quality and cost efficiencies customers have come to expect.

For my part, I’d argue that this willingness to adapt and continually innovate while keeping the customer in mind when making vital business decisions is a key component of growing a successful start-up in our industry.

Differentiate and adapt

Of course, there are always changes because the market is constantly on the move. We put our ideas for product innovation directly through our customers, and then customise our products accordingly based on their feedback.

Ultimately, the market decides if something is a good concept, and this methodology allows us to effectively reflect the customer feedback and continually explore the best way to reach our goals.

Furthermore, we also make sure that our employees are actively involved in our decision-making process and encourage them to bring forward their own ideas. This is another way to ensure we stay flexible and innovative.

Differentiation is therefore key. For us it’s all about the software and allowing users to have a seamless experience, hence why as mentioned above, we don’t want them to get bogged down in complicated features.

We strive to handcraft everything as much as possible, stripping out all unnecessary items which we believe gives us the edge as a business. Organisations that adopt this approach – led by insights from target customers – can always rely on the fact that their product or service will remain relevant and in line with increasing expectations.

Naturally though, nothing is ever perfect. As the industry grows businesses must adapt and this is where start-ups have the advantage. We’re not limited to the technology we already have in place and can easily upgrade and evolve.

It’s therefore important for business leaders to keep an open mind and be willing to make changes. The user will ultimately decide if a business is good enough but that doesn’t mean entrepreneurs should be afraid to adapt and go in another direction if that will bring the business success.

A challenge most face in the IT industry is finding capable developers to build what is wanted at the standard required, which is seen emulated across many other industries. Addressing change is key here, as there is a need to constantly adapt to keep a business at the front of its customers’ minds, and investing time and money into the right talent can definitely help to do so.

A leader must therefore decide on a business model and know what their employees will gain from working within the organisation. Like with producing the best product or service, offer something competitors are not doing. Give employees an incentive and the reward will be a productive and skilled workforce.

Structure and growth

Growth needs structure and a business leader with an open mind has various avenues to explore.  Brand values are key; having an open and collaborative culture worked for us at AnyDesk, providing an environment where creativity, entrepreneurialism and innovation are all rewarded, both for the benefit of the product and end user.

Meanwhile, simple organisational structures – which allow your business to adapt as the industry shifts – are central to business success. It’s therefore vital that business leaders keep on top of this by measuring successes and hitting milestones to evaluate what works best. An example of this in reality is how we created our beta platform.

After working day and night we all felt a huge amount of pride, and since then we’ve seen steady growth, recently reaching 100 million downloads of our software worldwide.

This allowed us to demonstrate our success and achievements in a tangible way for employees and customers to see, while measuring against our realistic targets and comparing them to competitors’ own milestones.

In summary, although the start-up landscape – and not just in the tech industries but beyond – is an intense battleground, if businesses are able to navigate the competition and have a clear vision for what their business stands for, the rewards can be huge – both for the teams behind the innovation and the end customers benefiting from it.

Philipp Weiser is CEO and co-founder of AnyDesk.