If you’re a Startup trying to compete with a Megacorp—the 800-pound Gorilla in the space—you need to understand the tax inherent to being a Gorilla
And then you need to make that tax work against the Gorilla—with your product's positioning & features
A thread on Gorilla taxes👇🏾
1/
Collaboration Tax
Getting two or more product groups at a megacorp to collaborate on creating a seamless end user experience is the hardest problem in computer science.
(I am not joking)
Examples of Collaboration Tax:
Calendly exists because the Gmail team & Calendar team haven’t worked together on creating a more seamless experience for that use case.
Loom might succeed because the Gmail, Video, Meet teams at Google are probably too busy with their own goals.
The takeaway for startups:
If you can create meaningful value by seamlessly integrating features of two or more distinct Gorilla products, you will typically have a lot of runway before the Gorilla can get its act together and eliminate its Collaboration Tax.
2/
Denominator Tax
Once a Gorilla’s product reaches massive scale (i.e. the denominator for its metrics gets very large), the pressure of OKRs & incentives will often force the Gorilla’s product teams to prioritize breadth of usage more than depth of usage.