What is your unfair advantage?

Question

I'm asking this in the context of your startup / newsletter / business. A lot of new founders (like myself) will often spiral into focussing too much on the disadvantages we may have but we often overlook the small advantages we have over others. For myself, I'm a member of a community called @SomalisinTech, this group is incredibly supportive and engaging. I feel like it's my 'unfair advantage' as a founder. This among other small advantages. So, I pose the question to you, what's your unfair advantage?

Accepted Answer

I am not sure in wheather it is an unfair advantage, but I am rather technically adept and as long as my business https://www.thebaite.com tries to apply artificial intelligence/machine learning and NLP to every day problems, I can code everything myself. So that would give me an unfair price advantage over the competition, but it does not feel like a huge advantage. Therefore I am not quite sure, but I guess this would count as an advantange.

Sune B. Thorsen · Answer

My unfair advantage is that I have the support of a lovely community of mobile gamers on Reddit (r/AndroidGaming and r/iosgaming). I've been an active part of those communities since 2017, posting weekly on there. It's what led me to start developing what I'm currently working on; a discovery platform for actual great mobile games.

I think really diving into a community you're passionate about is the best way to get an unfair advantage. But don't do so to sell things to them. Do it even before you have gotten an idea for your next project/product. You'll often find that every community has an issue that could use a product / solution :)

Andre · Answer

Being a designer who codes.

Peter Pezaris · Answer

got accepted to YC

Natalie Furness · Answer

My unfair advantage is Dyslexia. For many years I thought I was at a disadvantage for being different. Society seems to label dyslexics so negatively without realising the superpowers that it brings, from visualisation, engineering, creativity, critical thinking and ability to build links between concepts that seem unrelated to others. I am thankful to have been blessed with neurodiversity.

Daniela Passos · Answer

@sunebthorsen That's awesome.

Cater erol · Answer

I have no problem with it because its working fine with my store. You can see here https://tcl365.ie/

Sune B. Thorsen · Answer

@sunebthorsen @mukhtarmohamoud Nice! Yeah, it makes all the difference. Here's to grassroot projects :)

Clément Jacquelin · Answer

@jacquelinclem @mukhtarmohamoud ahah ! Yep it's unfair !

Clément Jacquelin · Answer

Speaking baguette 🇫🇷 & english, a natural advantage which give us more customers.

Abhishek Singh · Answer

It could be: 
- A large and passionate community (offline/online) 
- Network Effects & Personalisation
- Tons of Funding/Track record of huge achievements in a highly relevant field
- Exclusive partnerships that others can't get access to

The list goes on, but unfair advantage should be something which very few can imitate and gives you a nice head start over your competition.

For us personally, we are currently building our unfair advantages with the above principles in mind :)

Mukhtar Mohamoud · Answer

@jacquelinclem I wish I could speak Baguette too! But you're right, language is a HUGE advantage for sure.

Mukhtar Mohamoud · Answer

Anything that helps your business and gives you an up against the others is an advantage for sure! Thanks for sharing :)

Amit Tank · Answer

Inbound and Outbound prospecting, export of guestlist to any CRM, Dashboard view of meetings and more

check : https://joinpigeon.com

Natalie Furness · Answer

@natalie_furn @mukhtarmohamoud yes also Ford was a dyslexic, so is Lewis Hamilton. Einstein was also rumoured to have dyslexia. 😉

What is your unfair advantage?

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