Always the First Steps — Let’s Talk About Competitive Analysis Like It Actually Matters: Weekly Winning Strategies
https://www.octopusintelligence.com/competitive-analysis-matters-always-the-first-steps/
Competitive Analysis Matters. But you know everyone’s chasing tactics.
Cold outreach.
SEO.
Paid ads.
More content.
Yet most, especially in early-stage startups, skip the most obvious step:
Understand your competitors like you understand your product.
Not just their features.
Not just their pricing.
And not just their logos on a pitch deck.
I’m talking about understanding their decisions and why they make them, because that’s where the real signals hide.
So, what are the first steps? Here’s the actual list. No fluff.
- Forget the Product. Follow the behaviour.
Too many founders start with competitor feature comparison charts. That’s lazy.
Real competitor analysis starts with behaviour:
Who are they targeting?
What are they saying first in their marketing?
Where are they putting the most energy: SEO, LinkedIn, YouTube, events?
What’s their tone? Casual? Corporate? Technical?
Start tracking that. Patterns tell you what they believe works best.
Look at Sweater Ventures (launched in 2022). They started as a consumer VC fund. Then they noticed behaviour changes: people wanted investment content, not products. So, their messaging pivoted. Suddenly, their Instagram became more education than promotion. That tells you they’re prioritizing audience trust before conversion.
Track behaviour. Don’t just take screenshots.
- Build the “Why Did They Do That?” Habit
Every time a competitor makes a move—launches a new feature, hires someone new, changes their homepage layout—ask one question:
What problem are they trying to solve right now?
Examples:
Did they just raise a round? Expect pricing changes, new feature velocity, or a land grab.
Did they just rebrand? It could signal a shift in the target audience or business model.
Did a key exec leave? That’s usually a signal of internal disagreement or a missed goal.
This is how you stop reacting and start anticipating.
Take Hatch Credit. They began with credit-building for gig workers. Quietly removed several features in early 2023. No press release. No founder post. Just behaviour.
Why?
Because user acquisition costs too much per active card, they shifted to partnerships with fintech platforms. That move wasn’t random. It was a resource reallocation based on loss ratios.
Most people missed it. They weren’t paying attention to the subtle shifts.
- Stack Your Competitors by Hypothesis, Not by Category
People love neat grids.
X vs Y vs Z.
But markets aren’t clean. They’re messy. And most competitors don’t even know what market they’re in yet.
So, stop putting them in boxes like:
“Direct”
“Indirect”
“Alternative”
Instead, group competitors by belief:
These companies believe self-serve is enough.
These companies believe white-glove onboarding is required.
And these companies believe integrations are the differentiator.
Now, your map tells a story.
You start to see which belief systems are dying and which are winning. That’s more useful than “top 10 CRM tools for startups.”
Example: Lago vs Orb. Both are in usage-based billing. But their belief systems diverge:
Lago is betting on open-source + low overhead.
Orb is betting on product complexity and white-glove onboarding.
Same category. Different bets. That’s the battlefield.
- Ignore Positioning. Track Hiring.
Everyone says Positioning is strategy. But Positioning is usually marketing. And marketing can lie.
Hiring doesn’t.
Start tracking competitor job postings and team additions:
Where are they investing in talent?
Are they building out CS or engineering?
Do they suddenly need partnerships or compliance?
These are signals of internal priorities. They tell you where the business is really going.
Arc started as founder-friendly banking. But when they began hiring risk analysts and compliance managers in Q3 2023, you could tell they were pivoting to underwriting and revenue-based financing.
Again, that shift wasn’t a tweet. It was a job posting.
That’s how you stop guessing.
- Competitor = Any Product That Solves the Same Problem
This one’s not obvious until it hits you.
Your competition isn’t just direct. It’s anything your customer might use to avoid you.
A spreadsheet
A virtual assistant
A whiteboard
A Notion template
If someone can solve the same problem you do with a duct tape solution, that’s a competitor.
That’s why early-stage market analysis is about alternatives, not categories.
Tana launched in 2022. It’s an AI-native workspace. Competes with Notion, Obsidian, and even Google Docs. But their early adopters were developers replacing entire wiki systems with Tana + Zapier + custom scripts.
Most of those users weren’t migrating from Notion. They were migrating from chaos.
So, if you’re building in that space and only looking at “knowledge management” tools, you’re already behind.
Stop Copying. Start Interrogating.
Most people do competitive analysis like it’s a checkbox. Compare features. Copy pricing. Use similar taglines. Put together a nice chart for your pitch deck.
That’s not analysis. That’s mimicry. Real competitor analysis is:
Observation
Interpretation
Pattern recognition
And willingness to admit when you were wrong
You can’t automate it. You can’t outsource it entirely. You’ve got to build the muscle. The same way you make products or write content.
You can start playing the long game once you see what your competitors think.
You’ll see that most are chasing whatever works this quarter. You’ll stop flinching every time they launch something new. And then you’ll stop obsessing over surface-level moves.
Instead, you’ll be looking at the terrain underneath their decisions.
So, always the first steps? – Competitive Analysis Matters
Here they are—again—without the fluff:
Watch their behaviour, not just their homepage.
Ask why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Group competitors by belief, not by category.
Read their hiring plans like tea leaves.
Track alternatives that solve the same problem.
This isn’t “market research.”
It’s building a decision advantage.
Skip it, and you’re just another founder guessing.
But build it into your weekly rhythm, and now you’re playing offence.
No reaction. Not imitation. Just clear signals, real decisions, and better bets.
Let’s talk…