How I Competed Against Google With One Strategy - and Won

"Every successful business needs to answer a fundamental question: Why should someone choose your product over all the alternatives? In 1998, the founders of a company called Confinity had what seemed like a brilliant idea: a digital wallet that would allow users to beam money between Palm Pilots using infrared ports. The dot com bubble was inflating rapidly, and they were convinced the future of payments lay in handheld devices."

"Then something unexpected happened. The team realized users could send money via email instead, no Palm Pilot necessary, via a product dubbed PayPal. No one had a Palm Pilot, but everyone had an email address. As one reporter wrote in 1999, "Confinity's viral business model is so unique that it's difficult to gauge if it's simply a 'gee-whiz' technique or a bona fide stroke of business genius." We certainly know the answer now - nearly three decades on, the company known as PayPal is thriving."

"Underlying PayPal's success was how it was positioned - an easy-to-use, tech-forward solution to the cumbersome problem of sending money. The original, Palm Pilot-based idea would surely have fizzled if its founders hadn't extracted the technology that proved popular and run with it. Even the most promising ideas run the risk of falling flat if they're not properly positioned for success. PayPal had breakthrough technology, but it nearly got buried by unnecessary complexity."

"Why positioning matters Here's an example that hits especially close to home: Back when Jotform was still a young company, Google released a form builder that closely resembled ours. Not ideal. Instead of giving up, we considered what set our product apart accor"

A successful business must answer why customers should choose its product over all alternatives. Confinity originally built a digital wallet for Palm Pilots using infrared ports, but adoption stalled because few people owned the devices. The team shifted to sending money via email, creating PayPal, because everyone had email addresses. PayPal succeeded by extracting the useful technology from the original concept and positioning it as an easy, tech-forward solution to the cumbersome task of sending money. Promising ideas can fail when unnecessary complexity buries the value proposition. Positioning can also be critical when competitors copy features, requiring differentiation based on what makes the product distinct.

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