Jason Fried of 37Signals makes a comment about what defines success for a small company when faced with a giant competitor. This is a gem so I wanted to share it here - particularly to those who often speculate that "Zoho is doomed because Google or Microsoft will finish them off". To quote Jason
Google doesn't define our success. We do. "Winning" isn't a zero sum game. This isn't a 100 yard dash or a boxing match or a F1 race. It's building a sustainable business. There's lots of room for lots of those.
We don't have to match Google's userbase, or even have 1/10th of Google's userbase to be nicely profitable and build a sustainable business.
That is success to us. Being able to provide a great service to our customers, follow our vision, generate enough revenue to build a sustainable long-term business, and enjoy doing the work we do everyday is a success to us.
So far so good.
I couldn't say it better, even if I tried. We are not here to "beat Microsoft" or "beat Google". We have built a profitable business at AdventNet serving customers well, and we will continue doing it with Zoho too. We enjoy the work we do, and as long as that is profitable and customers keep coming, that is all that matters. Isn't Intuit a successful company at one 25th the size of Microsoft? Isn't MySQL a successful company at one hundredth the size of Oracle?
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