Ghada Ismail
Every startup starts with a spark. That moment when a founder spots a problem and thinks, “I can fix this.” But once you dive in, you quickly realize the water’s already full of other swimmers, all chasing the same customers, the same investors, and often, the same idea.
Welcome to the Red Ocean, a sea of fierce competition where businesses fight for survival. The water turns “red” because everyone’s battling for the same slice of the market.
But just beyond that chaos lies another kind of ocean: calm, vast, and full of possibility. It’s called the Blue Ocean. This is where startups don’t just compete; they create. Instead of fighting for market share, they open entirely new markets that didn’t exist before.
For founders building in Saudi Arabia’s fast-moving ecosystem, understanding which ocean you’re swimming in — and when to change course — can be the difference between sinking and sailing.
The Red Ocean: Competing in Crowded Waters
A red ocean is an existing market that’s well-defined, familiar, and crowded. It’s where businesses fight to stand out by cutting prices, speeding up delivery, or launching new features every few months.
Think about how saturated the food delivery market has become across the region. Every app offered the same restaurants, the same deals, and the same “15-minute delivery” promises. Growth came fast, but it came at a cost of endless discounts and shrinking margins.
Still, red oceans aren’t all bad. They’re predictable. There’s already demand, data, and investor interest. If you’re more efficient or execute better than others, you can thrive. But you’ll need to stay alert because one small shift in the market can wipe out your edge overnight.
The Blue Ocean: Creating Calm Waters of Your Own
Now picture the opposite: a market so fresh it doesn’t even have competitors yet. That’s the blue ocean. Here, startups create new demand, redefine value, and make competition irrelevant.
Take Tamara, for example. When it launched, “buy now, pay later” wasn’t yet common in Saudi Arabia. Instead of joining the traditional payments crowd, Tamara introduced something new: a local twist on BNPL that emphasized flexibility, trust, and Sharia compliance. It didn’t fight for customers; it created new ones. That’s blue ocean strategy in action: finding unmet needs and meeting them in a way no one else has.
Why So Many Startups Start in the Red
Most founders don’t dive straight into blue waters. It’s much easier — and safer — to start in a red ocean. Investors like proven markets. Customers understand the product. The data already exists.
But there’s a catch: red oceans often turn into races to the bottom. When every company offers the same thing, differentiation disappears. You stop focusing on innovation and start focusing on survival.
Saudi Arabia’s booming startup scene is seeing this happen fast — especially in fintech, e-commerce, logistics, and SaaS. The number of players in each space keeps growing, and standing out is getting harder by the day.
That’s why smart founders don’t just compete harder; they compete differently.
How to Find Your Own Blue Ocean
You don’t have to invent an entirely new industry to swim in a blue ocean. Sometimes, all it takes is a fresh perspective.
Here’s how founders can start shifting from red to blue:
- Reimagine value. Don’t just add more features, rethink what truly matters to your customer.
- Look at non-customers. Who isn’t using your product yet? What’s stopping them? That’s often where opportunity lies.
- Simplify boldly. The best ideas solve one problem exceptionally well, not ten problems halfway.
Balancing Vision with Reality
Blue oceans sound exciting — and they are — but they’re also unpredictable. There’s little data, few customer benchmarks, and no guarantee investors will understand your idea right away.
That’s why many founders blend both strategies. They start in the red to prove demand and sail toward the blue once they’ve earned traction. This hybrid approach helps balance risk with opportunity, a smart strategy in a developing yet ambitious market like Saudi Arabia’s.
So, Which Ocean Is Yours?
If you love efficiency and fine-tuning an existing model, the red ocean might suit you. If you thrive on innovation and uncertainty, the blue ocean could be your calling. But the best founders know how to navigate between both, combining the best from the two worlds: learning from the red, then sailing into the blue when the tide is right.