Every time I come back home from a dive, people ask me, “Did you see any sharks? Weren’t you scared?”

My answer is mostly the same. “Sure, I saw a shark. But, they aren’t really dangerous.” Few people take me seriously though. Yet, it’s absolutely true. I’ve dived with white and black tip reef sharks in the Maldives, nurse sharks in the Andamans, and watched in awe as a school of majestic grey reef sharks swam around us, curious about our noisy, bubbling figures. I’ve even seen a leopard shark in Tioman.

Nobody ever asks me about the other marine life we see far more often. Fire coral, stone fish, lion fish, and even the most common of them all, trigger fish never get a mention. 

Over the years, I’ve figured out a pattern to these questions—the larger the fish, the more dangerous people perceive them to be. That’s amazing because in my experience, the smaller the fish, the more potentially dangerous it can be.

Let’s take the trigger fish, for example. Trigger fish create nests in shallow waters up to 40 meters deep, and are tremendously aggressive when it comes to defending their territory.

An unsuspecting diver who dives into a trigger fish’s “territory” is in for an interesting dive. Picture this. You are skimming along the top of a reef, and you see a titan trigger fish. “How interesting,” you probably say. “A solitary guy pecking at the reef. Let me see what he is at.”

Before you even realise what’s happening, the fish is attacking you with all the pint-sized ferocity of a Pomeranian dog, nipping at you while you try to wave him away in panic. In a snap, he’s torn away parts of your wetsuit. He’s also got a hold of your (really hard plastic) fins, and is hanging on grimly.

By the time you get away, you have suffered great damage (more to your ego really) to your wetsuit, and your fins seem like they’ve been chewed up by a fairly vicious bulldog. You thank your stars that you’ve escaped, and wonder if that fish was rabid.

In just the same way, entrepreneurs are far more wary of large organisations as competition. In reality, most times, we needn’t worry about the larger fish in our seas. It’s the small, “next-door” operator that we should be careful of.

Are sharks really scary?

During the early days of my company, Help.com, our constant worry was that the competition would slaughter us. That competition was IBM, HP and Compaq. After all, they had a large, well established service network, the financial muscle to invest in setting up new centres, hire great people, and train them well. As a start-up, we had to think multiple times before making any investments.

We tiptoed around our competition tentatively. We’d quietly open a centre in a city, and sneakily inform our retail clients. We never made big-bang press announcements, had no direct connections with corporate clients even though doing so would have helped us get a much larger number of installation orders. We’d only gun for corporate business when we reached a certain revenue bracket in that geography.

Despite doing our best to steer clear of the big guys, one dreaded day, we felt we were going to be had. Acer, a powerhouse in the computer business, called us to fix up a meeting with their CEO in Bengaluru. Our blood turned to ice-cold water. We had just closed a deal in Hyderabad for providing maintenance services to a mid-sized corporation, and had pitched against Acer there. We had undercut Acer on that deal, and they’d looked like they’d cut us to ribbons after that meeting.

But, you can’t say no to a meeting with a top boss, so we went. In the plush waiting room, we crossed our fingers, hoping we wouldn’t get too badly hurt. We were bracing for a terrible encounter where Acer would rip us to shreds and refuse to provide us with the spare parts that we’d need to service our accounts. Acer spare parts were the cheapest option in the business, and we were definitely not ready for a price war at this stage.

But, the story unfolded differently. The CEO welcomed us warmly, made us comfortable and called in his head of services.

“I’ve been watching your company for some time now,” said the CEO. “You guys are good. Our customers have been telling us how much they enjoy interacting with your service teams. We wanted to check if you would be willing to partner with us across the country? We’ll direct all our retail and mid-sized corporate customers to you. And for the larger corporate clients, we can use your help in providing tech-support staff there. Would you be interested?” We’d gone in expecting the shark to rip us to shreds. And, here it was, offering us a partnership deal. We never expected that.

Now, a trigger fish example

One of the most easily damaged parts in a laptop is the plastic. These break, crack, and generally, cost a fortune to replace. We decided to go against the tide, and began working with a small, specialised vendor to repair plastic parts. Our vendor had the benefit of technology and know-how from organizations like 3M. It was a simple partnership. We’d hand over all the broken plastics to this vendor and he would re-fix them using special glues. The cracks would be invisible and the part’s life expectancy would go up dramatically.

Within six months, we thought we could do that ourselves. We decided to drop the small vendor and take a go at it on our own. We’d quickly developed an understanding for these repairs, and were confident we could do a job as good as our vendor. What we did not bargain for was the fight this small “trigger fish” put up.

To protect his territory, he went to 3M and told them that if they dealt with us, he would drop his business with them (which was significant for 3M), and go with a competitor. Needless to say, 3M refused to service us. When we went to the 3M competitor, our vendor was there before us, telling them that if they wanted to do business with him, they should give him exclusive territory rights. This was for all the geographies we wanted to support. With his specialised experience, there was no way 3M could say no.

For a couple of months, we gamely tried to fight him off. His company was one-tenth-the size of Help.com, and we thought we could overpower him. But, we failed. Each time we threatened his territory, he was there before us—his sharp teeth bared, and ready to bite into us.

We finally backed off and retreated. We made our peace with him in the only way he’d give up the fight—promising him that we would never compete with him again. In fact, we had to resume our business relations with him.

Our trigger fish taught us many important lessons. But, do you even know who are the trigger fish in your business?