Competitive Analysis

Problem

Teams often ask for competitive analysis when they really need a decision-ready view of the market: who matters, how they position, where pricing diverges, what gaps are open, and which moves are worth making now.

Audience

• Primary: operators, founders, and product or GTM teams
• Secondary: investors using market context before memo writing

When to Use

• Competitor profiling before a pricing, roadmap, or positioning decision
• Pricing and packaging comparisons across a known competitor set
• Strategic planning sessions that need a SWOT or positioning map
• Market scans where the user wants clear risks, opportunities, and recommended moves

When Not to Use

• Full financial model critique or forecast stress testing: use financial-model-review
• Source-heavy synthesis across many research artifacts: use research-synthesis
• Final investment or partnership memo drafting: use deal-memo-drafting
• Meeting transcript cleanup, action extraction, or follow-up drafting: use meeting-synthesis

Required Context

Gather or confirm:

• the company, product, or offer being analyzed
• the target decision this analysis should support
• the intended audience: operator, investor, partnership, board, or internal team
• the ideal customer profile or segment focus
• the competitor set, or permission to discover it
• pricing context if pricing is part of the request

Useful but optional:

• prior positioning notes, customer objections, or recent competitive findings from Open Brain

Process

1. Frame the assignment.
   • State the decision this analysis supports.
   • State the audience and how the output should be shaped for them.
2. Build the competitor set.
   • Use the named list if the user supplied one.
   • If not, identify the closest direct and adjacent competitors and label confidence.
3. Compare the right dimensions.
   • Always include positioning and target customer.
   • Include pricing and packaging only when public evidence exists.
   • Include product scope, distribution, signals of momentum, and likely threats where relevant.
4. Convert findings into judgment.
   • Distinguish facts, inferences, and open questions.
   • Call out where the market is crowded, under-served, or being misread.
5. Produce an operator-ready brief.
   • Summarize the market map, major competitors, and recommended moves.
6. Optionally use Open Brain.
   • Search for prior notes before repeating known findings.
   • Capture the finished brief or the highest-value strategic takeaways after the work is done.

Evidence and Judgment Rules

• Prefer primary sources first: company websites, pricing pages, product docs, public announcements, job posts, filings.
• Treat review sites, analyst commentary, and media summaries as secondary evidence.
• Never invent pricing, customer counts, or roadmap direction.
• If a pricing page or feature comparison is unclear, say it is unclear.
• Label inference explicitly when strategy is being inferred from hiring, messaging, or packaging.
• Separate "what we know" from "what this likely means".

Output

Default output:

• executive summary
• competitor set with role labels: direct, adjacent, emerging
• comparison table across the most relevant dimensions
• positioning map or simple market narrative
• SWOT-style implications or strategic risks
• 3 to 5 recommended moves tied to the stated decision

Works Well With

• research-synthesis when the source set is large or contradictory
• meeting-synthesis after customer calls, partner calls, or internal strategy reviews
• deal-memo-drafting when the final deliverable is a decision memo

Notes

• Keep the work operator-first unless the user clearly wants an investor framing.
• The goal is not exhaustive market trivia. The goal is a brief that changes a real decision.