I always wonder how some of those zany web startups get millions in funding. I’m sure (hope) that in more situations than not, investors are investing on the person and not the business. But to take such a gamble, one must assume that a previous relationship existed.

As for what makes me defensible, still working on it.

1. Big companies have other problems you don’t have. Slow, politics, having to defend existing revenue streams before going after new ones.

2. Big companies have to attack big markets, otherwise there’s not enough money to make up for the big costs. Small companies don’t run after big niches anyway.

3. If the other company is small, you have first-mover advantage.

4. Just “copying” someone’s look or features or even text off the website isn’t enough. They don’t have your reputation, they don’t have your eyeballs, they’re not listening to your existing customers, they don’t have your link-backs, and if they copy just some of it, everything else will be inconsistent and people recognize it.

5. “Having money” doesn’t mean they can write a decent product or run a decent marketing campaign or get people to notice them or get people to like them or execute anything else internal to the business.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: The “what if there’s a competitor” question, whether about open source, bootstrapped startup, funded startup, or existing company, IS TRUE OF EVERY SOFTWARE COMPANY THAT EVER EXISTED.

That alone is proof enough that it’s an irrelevant question.

A GOOD question is: What makes you special? What about you would be HARD to copy? Stuff like that.