The Effect of Competitor Interaction on Startup’s Product Development

Abstract

Context and motivation] Due to lack of resources and teams with low levels of experience, startups face several challenges during their product development, such as product customization, attracting new customers, and mastering the technology uncertainty. To increase their market presence and compensate for their lack of resources, startups need to consider other options such as joint ventures and partnerships.[Question/problem] Some companies that share highly similar resources and businesses can be potential competitors with one another. The effect of interaction with such potential competitors with respect to startups to obtain expertise has not been often reported in the literature to date. [Principal ideas/results] In this study, we simulated two software startups in a controlled experiment to evaluate the effect of interaction with a potential competitor in the effort estimation process. A real startup case was also involved in analyzing the effect. The results of the study show that there is a statistically significant difference in the effectiveness when co-operating with a competitor in the process. Experiment participants also considered the interaction with the potential competitor useful based on the exchange of important information and ideas regarding the product domain.[Contribution] This paper contributes by demonstrating the effect of interaction with a potential competitor in the effort estimation process. In addition, our study encourages further research on startups working in with the competitors in other software engineering knowledge areas.

Startup ecosystem effect on minimum viable product development in software startups

“…It has been observed that the RE process is of significant interest in small software companies [6] and software startups because it is central to their software engineering activities [7]. Our previous research [29,30] on this topic explored the effect of competitor's interaction during the process 90 and identified the following most commonly used techniques during RE processes: internal sources (e.g., for requirements sources); analyses of similar products (e.g., elicitation of requirements); the use of informal notes (e.g., for requirements specification); identifying value for customers, products, and 95 stakeholders (e.g., for requirements prioritization); and internal reviews/prototypes (e.g., for validation of the requirements). Melegati et al in [31] interviewed representatives of software startups and found that external factors, such as the startup ecosystem, founders, team, and market, affect the RE process.…”

The Blitz Canvas: A Business Model Innovation Framework for Software Startups

“…In certain cases, a study of the competition can serve as a good starting point for the conception of solutions [72]. A study of the competition can also help the startup to recognize the best time to perform a pivot [73], as well as potential partnerships into which they can enter [74]. However, in the current context, the central aim of this study of the competition is to contrast the current offerings with that of the competition, to improve the current offering by determining the base set of features and establishing a relevant USP.…”

An anatomy of requirements engineering in software startups using multi-vocal literature and case survey

“…These were concept, development, working prototype, functional product with limited users, functional product with high growth, and mature product. Moreover, our earlier studies on software startups simply explored the effects of competitor interactions on product development and product 60 idea validation [18,19].…”

“…To find the articles, keywords related to population and intervention were used (Table 2). Keywords used for population were taken from a previous study ( [25]), while keywords for intervention were based on the learning gained during our previous work [18]. In that study, we conducted an experiment on the RE process in software startups.…”