How to analyse your competition?

Imagine finding an unknown competitor who raised $12M, targets your exact customers, and plans to build the same features you're developing. Even worse, three prospects mentioned them in recent sales calls. This situation reveals a common problem: most competitor analysis looks backward. Instead of identifying emerging threats, companies often track established players and compare feature lists without understanding why customers choose alternatives.

Learning Objectives

By completing this lesson, you will be able to:

1. Identify your direct and indirect competitors using the Who-What-How framework
2. Analyze competitor data using a structured matrix approach
3. Apply competitive insights to inform business strategy decisions

Why do you need to analyse your competition?

You need competitor analysis to make three critical decisions: pricing, features, and go-to-market strategy. Without understanding your competitive landscape, you risk building features nobody needs, pricing yourself out of the market, or targeting the wrong customers.

Competition is bigger than you think

Don't start your competitor analysis by just listing similar products in a spreadsheet. You'll miss the bigger picture. Your true competition might not be another product—it could be a simple spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group, or customers choosing to do nothing. Remember, you compete with every option your customer considers.

Your competition is any option a customer might "hire" to solve their problem—including paid software, marketplace channels, improvised workflows, or the status quo. When we view choices through the job-to-be-done lens rather than product categories, we understand why teams stick with "good enough" tools. People switch only when new solutions provide benefits that outweigh costs and risks.

Case Study: software for boutique fitness studios

Imagine you're building software for boutique fitness studios in Poland. You visit a yoga studio owner in Warsaw who fits your target profile. She needs to keep her morning classes at least 80% full while minimizing administrative work and maintaining predictable cash flow. You assume she'll love your studio management software—you've studied Perfect Gym, Fitssey, and WodGuru and built better features than all of them. But when you pitch your solution, she hesitates. "I'm actually doing fine with Google Sheets and WhatsApp," she says. You're confused. That system must be a nightmare—no automated payments, no attendance tracking, no booking system. How is that "fine"?

What you have missed is that her Google Sheets solution costs nothing and she understands every cell. Yes, she spends extra time on administration, but she launched her studio with zero software costs and complete control. For a new studio watching every złoty, that matters more than automation. Then she mentions MultiSport—the corporate benefit card that sends her customers. They take fees and impose rules, but they fill her off-peak classes without marketing spend. That predictable stream of corporate customers solves her capacity problem better than any software feature.

Another studio owner down the street chose differently. He uses BodyVibes, which puts his classes in their marketplace app. He sacrificed control—BodyVibes stands between him and his customers—but gained instant discoverability. New customers find him without effort.

Suddenly you realize: You're not just competing against Perfect Gym or Fitssey. You're competing against:

• The simplicity of spreadsheets
• The customer flow from MultiSport
• The discovery engine of BodyVibes
• The option to continue with manual processes

Each solution wins in different scenarios:

• If she prioritizes filling off-peak hours without marketing costs, MultiSport and BodyVibes beat any software.
• If she wants to build customer loyalty and control her brand, specialized software makes sense—she owns the payments, data, and communication.
• If she needs to launch quickly with no upfront costs, that simple Sheets and WhatsApp combo remains unbeatable.

Once you see competition this way, your strategy shifts. You stop comparing feature lists and start solving the real problem: proving your software delivers more value than free spreadsheets, more customers than specialized platforms (MultiSport), and more control than marketplace solutions (BodyVibes)—combined. You might even integrate with some of them rather than compete, or offer a free tier that beats the spreadsheet option.

Finding your competitors: the WHO-WHAT-HOW Framework

Now that you understand competition differently, you need a systematic way to map it. The Who-What-How Framework reveals your complete competitive landscape through three fundamental questions:

WHO else wants your customers' attention?

Map out companies targeting the same audience. For project management software aimed at creative agencies, your competitors include traditional options like Asana and Monday. But don't forget less obvious alternatives: creative directors who embrace minimal structure, account managers relying on email, and producers tracking everything mentally. Each approach reflects a different work philosophy.

WHAT problems do these alternatives solve?

Your project management tool offers organization and efficiency. But email threads need no training and make everything searchable in Gmail. The creative director's less structured approach maintains flexibility and reduces process overhead. When you understand what each alternative delivers, you can position against their strengths rather than just their features.

HOW do these solutions deliver value?

Your software automates workflows. Consultants provide human expertise. Spreadsheets offer complete customization. Books teach methodology. Each delivery method appeals to different preferences and contexts. Some clients want technology. Others want relationships. Many want both.

Collecting Competitive Intelligence

Now you need to collect specific information about your competitors.  This is where most founders get stuck—they either collect too little and guess, or they gather too much data and never act. The key is knowing what information matters and where to find it quickly.

To organize your research, create a competitor matrix. Use a spreadsheet with each column representing a competitor, including your own business. Rows should contain key metrics and information categories. Look at the example below.

What Data to Track and Why

• COMPANY
  ‍Answers: a startup with funding acts differently than a bootstrapped company or an established player.
  • Year Founded → Shows company maturity and market position
  • Team Size → Reveals organizational scale and resources
  • Hiring or Firing? → Shows strategic priorities (sales hiring indicates growth focus)
  • Total Funding & Latest Funding → Reveals financial resources and ability to sustain customer acquisition costs
  • Key Investors → Signals strategic direction and available expertise (prominent investors often provide connections to larger partners/clients)
• MARKET
  ‍Answers: What markets are they in? Who are their customers? What segments do they target?
  • Target Customer → Defines their actual market
  • Geographic Markets → Shows expansion ambitions
  • Key Customer Logos → Proves which segments value them
  • Primary Buyer / Decision Maker → Shapes your sales and marketing strategy (if they sell to VPs while you target PMs, you're targeting different decision-makers despite similar products)
• VALUE PROPOSITION
  ‍Answers: What do they do? What products/services do they offer?
  • Core Products/Services → What they actually sell
  • Core Promise (Value Proposition) → Their claimed differentiation
  • Pricing Strategy → Per seat, usage-based, flat fee? It reveals target market and strategy
  • Starting Price → Shows the barrier to entry for customers
  • Product Strengths → What customers actually praise
  • Product Gaps → What customers actually hate
• GO-TO-MARKET
  ‍Answers: How do they sell?
  • Sales Model → Self-serve, sales-led, or hybrid?
  • Main Channels → Reveals customer acquisition focus
  • Partnership Strategy → Shows how they plan to scale
  • Recent Changes → Website/pricing changes show pivots
  • Job Postings → Engineering hires = product focus, Sales hires = growth focus

Your competitor matrix captures key data points, but consider these less obvious ways to find a competitive edge:

• Sign up for competitor trials, attend their webinars, and join their communities. Look for gaps between marketing promises and actual user experience. When their "seamless onboarding" requires three support emails, you've found your advantage.
• Join industry forums where customers share feedback, attend conferences where competitors present, and follow their partners' roadmaps. People speak more candidly in peer groups than in reviews.
• Set up Google Alerts for "[competitor] down," "[competitor] alternative," and "[competitor] problem." These alerts reveal real-time feedback when services fail and expose product weaknesses.
• Monitor LinkedIn for valuable signals. Senior engineers leaving suggests internal problems. New enterprise salespeople indicates upmarket movement. Job postings reveal future priorities months before announcements.

Tools that make intelligence gathering easier

• For competitive SEO: Ahrefs or SEMrush - track their keywords, backlinks, and traffic
• For funding data: Crunchbase or Dealroom - monitor investments and investor connections
• For technology stack: BuiltWith or Wappalyzer - understand their technical capabilities
• For social monitoring: Mention or Brand24 - track customer sentiment
• For product updates: Crayon or Kompyte - automated competitive intelligence