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Entrepreneurship & Startups vocabulary · Ideas & Business Models

Competitive advantage

Meaning in entrepreneurship & startups, with examples

/kəmˈpetətɪv ədˈvæntɪdʒ/nounCommon term

In entrepreneurship & startups, competitive advantage means: Something that lets a company serve customers better or more cheaply than its rivals, such as unique technology, data, a strong brand or lower costs.

In Turkish: rekabet avantajı, rekabet üstünlüğü

How it is used

A standard topic in pitches and business plans. You build, gain, keep or lose a competitive advantage. Investors want to know whether it is sustainable, meaning hard for rivals to copy; a long-lasting advantage is often called a moat.

Example sentences

  1. Our main competitive advantage is five years of local delivery data that no rival has.

  2. Being cheaper is not a lasting competitive advantage if a bigger company can match the price.

Common collocations

  • sustainable competitive advantage
  • gain a competitive advantage
  • key competitive advantage
  • lose a competitive advantage
  • moatA long-lasting advantage that protects a business from competitors, like the water-filled ditch around a castle; for example network effects, patents or high switching costs.
  • first-mover advantageThe benefit a company may get from being the first to enter a new market, such as brand recognition, early customers and control of key resources.
  • value propositionA short, clear statement of the main benefit a product gives its customers and why they should choose it over other options.
  • network effectA situation in which a product becomes more valuable to each user as more people use it, as with social networks, payment systems and marketplaces.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Ideas & Business Models

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