How Startups Compete — Principles for the TRAFOLO Team

Why can a small team in Riga compete with companies a thousand times our size? Because size cuts both ways: in focused, niche industries, a specialised team can serve customers better than a broad giant can. Below are the principles behind how we compete — and win in the niches we choose. Read them: they explain why we work the way we do.

Who we compete with: Ansys

Ansys is the incumbent giant in engineering simulation; for magnetics our main overlap is Ansys Maxwell (low-frequency electromagnetics). It's now part of Synopsys, which acquired it in 2025 — i.e. an even bigger, more enterprise-focused owner.

Our edge (play to these): - Focus. We do magnetic components — transformers, chokes, inductors, motors — and tailor the whole workflow to that. Ansys spreads across every physics and industry. - Speed & ease. Faster setup, smaller learning curve, quicker to a trustworthy answer for our cases. We ship improvements in days, not multi-year release cycles. - Trustworthy results, not just pretty pictures. Our whole pitch is results you can stake a real design on. - Closeness to the customer. We talk to users directly and fix what they actually hit. A giant can't. - Cost & simplicity. Cheaper, simpler licensing, far less procurement friction.

Their edge (respect these): - Breadth & depth. Full multiphysics (EM + thermal + structural + fluids) and deep features for edge cases. - Credibility & validation. Decades of track record, brand trust, and a huge install base — "nobody gets fired for choosing Ansys." - Resources. Enormous R&D, big support orgs, integrations, and entrenched enterprise relationships.

How we compete: we won't out-gun Ansys across all of engineering simulation — and we don't try to. In focused, niche industries and applications, a specialised team can compete strongly and win: be the strongest option for a specific class of magnetics problems — faster, clearer, more trustworthy, better-supported — own that niche, then expand. Where Ansys over-serves (too complex, too costly, too slow to adapt), we're simply the better tool.

Working view — refine with the team as we learn more from real deals.

Why focus competes with scale

Big incumbents tend to lose ground in a niche not because they're dumb, but because they're too disciplined: they listen to their biggest customers and chase higher margins, so they under-serve the small, "not good enough yet," low-margin corners. A focused newcomer starts where the giant doesn't bother defending, gets better fast, and moves up. - For us: pick a specific magnetics-simulation problem we can own completely, win there, then expand — don't try to out-feature Ansys everywhere at once.

Copying what already exists is a grind; being genuinely better at one clearly-defined thing is where the value is. Aim to be ~10× better at one thing — that's effectively a small monopoly you can then widen. And being first matters less than being the best that lasts — the one who makes the defining product in a category and keeps it for years. - For us: be 10× clearer, faster, more trustworthy for a class of problems — not a cheaper copy of the big suites. What do we believe about magnetics simulation that most of the market doesn't?

How we move: fast and focused

Don't build in the dark. Ship the smallest version that tests the idea, put it in front of real users, measure, learn. If the evidence says we're wrong, change direction without ego. The waste to avoid is building something nobody wants — beautifully. - For us: small tests, quick versions, real customer feedback. Done beats perfect; build what customers will pay for.

And remember: a great product doesn't sell itself — distribution and selling matter as much as the technology. Don't look down on the commercial side.