Honest competitive landscape analysis

Revenue growth

How to tackle competitions

I often participate in good debate about competitor offerings. I am a believer of healthy competition - it is an evidence that there is a market for your competing products. However, the way founders/CEOs handle the competitive landscape analysis can dictate the company’s future growth. In my experience reactions to competitors vary across Startups.

They always have excuses - for their product’s shortcomings

This is the attitude I often see when founders face strong competitions. Rather than evaluating competitors’ offering fully, they have explanations to all shortcomings of their own products, therefore, there is no room for fully evaluating other products available in the market. Their judgment is often clouded by their own ego and a false belief that nobody else can do better. This is dangerous because - unless you admit that there are areas to improve, your products would never have a chance to improve and attract more clients.

Panic button leading to hasty decisions

Another typical reaction to competition is “panic mode”. Whenever new competitors emerge in the market, panic mode kicks in, and this usually leads to a hasty decision for new product design. There is no need to over-react when new competitions emerge. Healthy competition is a good thing and by examining your competitors’ offerings you can gain valuable insights into the current market trend. I always advise founders and CEOs to look deep into the competitors’ products rather than pressing a panic button. Are their products attracting a strong traction from your target audience? If so, what is the difference between their offerings and yours? What about industry trend? Are new products emerging to compete with you because there is a change in the way people do things? Before making a hasty decision to change the course of your offerings, these questions need to be answered fully.

Balancing act after a full competitive landscape analysis

Successful Startup and FinTech companies take competitive landscape analysis very seriously and conduct a full research into their competitors’ offerings. This includes the analysis of their value propositions, target audience, delivery mechanism, pricing, and general engagement level with the industry. Usually this review process is carried out by multiple number of people within the organisation to eliminate bias. This will in turn encourage a healthy debate about the threat from competitors. Fully transparent and honest reviews of the competitors can often result in robust idea generation, especially, for new product design. You shouldn’t be afraid of your competitors - instead, make sure that you review their offerings thoroughly and identify where you can do differently and better. Usually active brainstorming session with your leadership team is a good idea to challenge each other. Remember, innovation usually emerges out of such robust discussion.