Startup Corner #22: “What If Google Builds This?”
Why Big Tech copying your idea usually creates your market — not kills it
Hey friends,
There’s a question that shows up in every founder’s journey.
It gets whispered in pitch meetings, scribbled in investor notes, or said aloud in that moment of doubt when you see a headline on TechCrunch:
“But what if Google builds this?”
Or Apple. Or Amazon. Or OpenAI.
The names change. The fear doesn’t.
The fear is that if a big company even gestures toward your space — launches a demo, ships a tool, publishes a research paper — then your startup is instantly obsolete.
But the more I’ve watched this play out — from both sides — the more I believe the opposite:
Big Tech can’t kill early-stage startups.
Most of the time, it validates them.
Let’s slow this down.
What you’re really afraid of — when you ask “What if Google builds this?” — is that their version will be faster, free, and default. That their distribution will crush your discovery. That their resources will crush your roadmap.
But that assumes the work of building a company is the same as shipping a feature.
It isn’t.
Big Tech builds capabilities.
Startups build solutions.
That’s not the same thing.
And the difference is everything.
Let’s make this real.
Say you’re building an AI-powered tool for podcast editors — transcript-based editing, highlight reels, clean audio, instant clips.
One day, Apple drops a press release: “New AI Features in GarageBand!”
You flinch.
But let’s look closer.
Apple might handle transcription. Maybe even generate chapters.
But are they fine-tuning the cuts to match TikTok pacing?
Are they integrating with Riverside, Libsyn, and Spotify Ads?
Are they letting production teams review and comment inline?
Are they obsessing over export formats for every possible content stack?
Nope.
Because that’s not their business.
It’s a feature, not a focus.
And for you — that’s your wedge.
This is how it usually plays out:
A big company ships something adjacent.
The market notices.
People try it.
And when it inevitably falls short — they go looking for a real solution.
That’s your moment.
You move beyond getting disrupted.
You get discovered.
What sounded like a threat becomes your best marketing tool:
“If Apple is building in this space, it must be important.”
There’s a deeper point here — one I’ve come to believe pretty strongly:
Startups die because they don’t go deep enough, fast enough.
Big Tech can copy your surface. But they don’t care about your edge cases.
They don’t stay obsessed with a tiny group of users for five years.
You do.
That’s your advantage.
Not speed.
Not exclusivity.
But insight and follow-through.
So what do you do when a giant enters your space?
You hold your ground. And then you move forward.
You go deeper on the workflow.
You tune your onboarding.
You tighten your pricing.
You integrate with the tools Big Tech ignores.
You ship things that only someone living in the problem would think to build.
Because remember: most of the world doesn’t need a generalist tool.
They need something that just works for them.
That’s where you win.
Final thought:
The better question is:
“What would it take for them to care about this as much as I do?”
Most of the time, the answer is: they won’t.
They’ll ship. They’ll move on.
And that’s when your job actually gets easier.
Because now the market’s awake.
And you’re already a few steps ahead.
— RB
Startup Corner