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🧠 Smartest Startup Tactics to Kill Competition (with examples) 1. Blitzscaling / Outpacing the Market Instead of competing slowly, some startups raise huge capital and expand at a speed that competitors can’t match. Example: Uber — expanded globally at lightning speed, spending heavily on subsidies to dominate cities before local players could catch up. Competitors like Sidecar and smaller taxi apps died quickly. 2. Price Wars & Subsidies Offering services/products at unsustainably low prices to capture market share, forcing weaker rivals out. Example: Flipkart vs Snapdeal (India) — Flipkart kept burning money on discounts and better logistics. Snapdeal couldn’t sustain, lost sellers/customers, and faded. 3. Exclusive Lock-ins (Supply/Distribution Moats) Startups secure exclusive partnerships with suppliers or distributors so rivals can’t access them. Example: OYO Rooms — tied up budget hotels with minimum guarantees, making it hard for other aggregators to sign them. 4. Network Effects as a Weapon Building a product that becomes more valuable as more users join, creating a "winner takes all" effect. Example: WhatsApp — free, simple, and network-driven. Once enough people joined, rivals like Hike, WeChat (in India) couldn’t break in because users didn’t want to leave where their friends already were. 5. Copying + Tweaking Competitor’s Model Entering with a slightly better execution of an existing model and then scaling faster. Example: Facebook vs MySpace/Orkut — Facebook copied social networking, but executed cleaner UI, less spam, and started with exclusivity (universities), then expanded. MySpace collapsed under clutter. 6. Bundling / Ecosystem Play Killing rivals by offering multiple services bundled together so users never leave. Example: Amazon — Prime bundling (free delivery, video, music) made it impossible for smaller e-commerce players to compete on customer stickiness. 7. Regulatory Arbitrage Exploiting legal grey zones where traditional players are restricted. Example: Airbnb — grew massively before cities even had laws around home rentals. Hotels couldn’t fight back fast because regulations lagged. 8. Acqui-kill (Buy & Shut Down) Acquiring competitors not for growth but just to remove them from the market. Example: Facebook acquiring Instagram & WhatsApp — both could have become threats to Facebook’s dominance. 9. Playing Psychological Games Framing competition as “outdated” or “uncool,” making them irrelevant in the public eye. Example: Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads — made Windows PCs look boring and uncool, pushing younger generations to Macs. 10. Building Infrastructure Moats Investing in backend infra that others can’t replicate, ensuring better experience at lower cost. Example: Jio (India) — killed telecom competition by investing billions into 4G infra and offering near-free data. Airtel, Vodafone, Idea struggled; many smaller players vanished. Startups rarely “kill” competition by just being better. They usually kill it with speed, money, psychology, and moats...