What To Do When Google Steps Into Your Space

There are few more competitive markets these days than the mobile application development platform marketplace. Panvista president Andrew Echenberg says his company has survived in this cluttered space by focusing on one specific need in the marketplace: marketing. Panvista built its mobile app with agencies in mind. Even with that tight focus, Panvista, like any app developer, must stay well ahead of the curve in order to keep delivering value as customer needs change.

In addition to the fight to remain relevant, developers need to defend against copycats. If you have a truly great idea, what's to stop others (perhaps companies with greater resources than yours) from running with it?

In this blog written from Startup Fest last summer, Mira Shenker quotes keek.com co-founder David Kerzner,who says the one question that stumps most tech startups is simply "If it's such a great idea, why can't Facebook do it?"

In this episode of the PROFIT BusinessCast, Robert Gold and Andrew Brown put Echenberg on the spot, asking him: Google launches a product exactly like yours. What do you do?

"To have a competitor like Google in the space isn't necessarily a bad thing," answers Echenberg. "It validates the market and shows that there is serious demand for what we have to offer."

Echenberg says he would capitalize on any buzz generated by Google's interest in his company's space by asking himself, "What are they going to do and what can we do better than them in a few key focus areas?"