Best for
- Founders asked 'how are you different?' by every investor
- Positioning a product in a crowded category
- Watching competitors on purpose instead of in panic
What you give it
- Your product, your target customer, and the competitors you know of
- Access to what you have: win/loss notes, deal feedback, your pricing
What you get back
- A landscape map: who competes for which job and customer, including the non-obvious substitutes
- A comparison on dimensions customers actually choose on — with evidence per claim
- Where you win, where you lose, and the positioning that follows honestly from both
How it works
- Defines the competition from the customer's view: whatever they would use instead — including doing nothing.
- Gathers public evidence: sites, pricing, docs, release notes, reviews, hiring pages — claims kept separate from verified facts.
- Compares on buyer-decision dimensions, not on feature-count theatre.
- Reads trajectories: what releases, pricing moves and job ads imply about where each player is headed.
- Concludes with honest win/lose zones and what they mean for positioning and roadmap.
Example
You: We sell scheduling software to clinics. Map our competition before the rebrand.
Result: Seven named competitors plus the two real ones nobody listed: the practice-management suite's built-in module and the receptionist's paper book. Comparison on the six dimensions clinic buyers actually weigh; your honest win (insurance-form handling) and your honest loss (price at small-clinic scale) — and positioning built on the win instead of the wish.
Limits — please read
- Public evidence only — no pretexting, nothing gathered behind logins, nothing that would embarrass you.
- A snapshot ages; it dates every claim and recommends a refresh cadence.
- It will name the uncomfortable losses; analysis that only flatters is marketing, not analysis.