Startups: Here to Help, or Eliminate Your Job Entirely?

There are many startups and machines that have emerged and continue to emerge, that may wipe out others in their industry. Their goal is to squash whoever is their current competition, and come out on top. In filling the need, they want to replace everyone else involved. The approach is more “eat or be eaten,” and less harmonious where everyone can get a slice, but it’s a definite trend in the world of robots and machines. The other end of this is the startups who don’t try to replace, but want to help the industry, and come up with creative and different ways to fill the industry’s need.

One such example is the Driverless Truck, an idea that is well on its way to fruition, and would replace the jobs of 1.6 million Americans who currently drive trucks. The downsides around unemployment are obvious, but the benefits are numerous, including less car crashes, higher output in goods because driverless trucks don’t have any restriction when it comes to working overtime, as well as significantly reduced prices in those goods. While some argue automation won’t kill jobs (but rather help job growth) others say Automated Robots threaten to replace office jobs including secretaries, finance managers, and telephone sales people, as well as jobs like paralegals and pharmacists. Cashiers have already been replaced with automatic registries in many stores, and there are more advances in automation every day.

Then there is the other category of startups, the ones who simply want to help their industry succeed, and whose angle is to fill the need in a different way in that particular industry. MyDealerOnline falls into this category, and hopes to help out car dealerships and consumers in the process. Rather than online competitors, such as Beepi, who want to cut car dealers out completely as the digital shift is taking over, MyDealerOnline is the automotive service that provides dealers additional inventory by integrating inventory from car auctions, and aims to bridge the gap between wholesale and retail by helping dealers get up to date with e-commerce trends, adding inventory, and keeping dealers involved.

MyDealerOnline intends to minimize acquisition mistakes, match pricing to market conditions, and reduce dealers average inventory age. By fulfilling these three objectives, MyDealerOnline hopes to make the car-buying process more fluid, more enjoyable, and more lucrative for everyone involved. Though this startup takes a different approach to car buying, the company believes it will interest customers through more appealing used car options. Consumers will no longer need to risk auctions and “face-less” experiences for more affordable options, but can instead have those same options directly from deals. The customer benefits further because they have many more options than just what is on the lot in front of them. In turn, this should have a large effect on buying cars, and the way consumers are doing it currently.

As companies like MyDealerOnline come into being, it remains to be seen whether they can succeed while not wiping out their competitors, but creating new avenues for consumers to use. The two sides to the tech industry are clear: those that are trying to turn everything into a digital age, where it seems like the future is headed, and those who are improving the systems we currently have, but also that help the people involved in the industries.