How many times have you heard some new business boast that they’re going to ‘kill’ their big gorilla market competitor?

My Google Reader’s been doing some strange things lately. Today, for some arcane reason, it brought up a 6 week old post from Wil Schroter. I liked it, so here it is in its entirety:

Ten years from now when we reminisce about the 00’s and laugh about Web 2.0 companies, one of the lamest company pitches we are going to remember is this:

• Our Company is the - Killer
• Netscape will launch the Digg-Killer
• Socializr is the Evite-Killer
• AnythingYouCanName.com is the MySpace-Killer

I’m so flipping tired of hearing companies describing themselves as the one product that is going to take down some behemoth.

When does this actually happen? How often does a company really “kill” a behemoth?

Maybe .00001% of the time it’s predicted?

Probably less.

Just because you have released a product that may have a feature that’s better than a big competitor out there, it doesn’t mean their fate is sealed and you have a victory.

A new feature does not kill a company. The execution behind that feature is what kills a company. And execution is something judged on historical proof, not by some optimistic forecasts.

Here is what makes you a AnythingYouCanName.com-killer:

You make more money - Sure, your product is cool. But until it translates into more revenue than Microsoft, you’re not Microsoft (Google, are you listening?)

You have more members - MySpace has an estimated 100+ million members and has grown more quickly than just about any user base in history. You signed up 1,000 users in your first week. You’re not MySpace.

They know who you are - I can’t tell you how many pitches I’ve heard from startups that are going to eat the lunches of the big contenders. Except for the fact that those big contenders don’t even know who the startups are. If you are doing so much damage how is it that you’re not even on their radar?

We all want to create big startups that conquer the world. But before we start claiming ourselves the next Heavyweight Champion we actually need to step in the ring and win a fight.