Why Do Giants Ignore Opportunities Looking Too Small?

Incumbents wake up late to new markets. Founders locate gaps large enough to reach scale before competition arrives from giants.

In the early days of a startup competition comes from other startups. In the later days of a startup competition comes from incumbents. The question is when incumbents wake up and if a gap exists that lets a founder get something done to enough scale to survive. For a one to four trillion dollar market cap company a line of business needs five, ten, twenty billion dollars of revenue eventually to move the number at all. A couple hundred million dollars looks uninteresting. An opportunity looking like a couple hundred million dollars really becomes twenty billion dollars in revenue. A founder needs to find the loophole of building something an incumbent should pursue.

The loophole provides enough time to achieve scale before an incumbent enters a market.