Research competitors and workarounds without copying them

Research the job’s alternatives

Competition is every way a customer can get the job done or decide not to do it. Include direct products, adjacent products, spreadsheets, agencies, internal staff, manual work, combining several tools, and the status quo. If you list only software with the same feature set, you will miss the alternative that actually wins: “I ask my assistant to do it.”

Start from a customer and a recent situation. Ask what they used, what triggered the search, which options they tried, why they chose one, what they still do manually, and what would make them reconsider. With permission, ask them to walk through the current workflow. This reveals integrations, habits, switching costs, and hidden jobs that a feature checklist cannot show.

Build a small evidence-based comparison

Pick three to five alternatives that appear in real conversations. Use current first-party evidence where possible: product documentation, onboarding, official pricing and terms, release notes, and a trial or demo you actually tested. Review sites and community posts can reveal questions and complaints, but treat them as leads; selection bias, paid placement, and old versions make them weak estimates of prevalence.

Compare criteria connected to the job:

Record a URL, the date checked, and what you observed for each volatile claim. Mark unknowns as unknown; do not fill blank cells with guesses. Vendor feature and price pages change, and list prices rarely capture implementation, usage, tax, or contract costs. Recheck official terms before using any comparison in a purchase decision.

Look for a reachable gap

A gap matters only if a defined group cares enough to change. “Competitors lack AI” is not a customer problem. Better candidates are: a repeat task that current tools leave manual; a user group the products assume away; a painful setup or migration; a trust constraint; or a smaller workflow that is over-served by a complex system.

Write a positioning hypothesis:

For [customer in a specific situation], [product] helps [complete a job/outcome]. Compared with [current alternative], it changes [meaningful part of workflow] because [evidence-backed reason].

Then test whether the customer recognizes the difference and whether it changes behavior. Ask them to compare a realistic task, explain what they would keep, and identify what would need to be true to switch. For business products, learn who chooses, who pays, who approves security, and what existing contract or process must change.

Avoid weak conclusions

• A large number of competitors can indicate a known job, but it does not prove demand for your product.
• A missing feature may reflect low demand, high risk, or an intentional product boundary.
• A common complaint may come from a narrow, vocal subgroup.
• A large top-down market estimate does not tell you how many reachable buyers fit your first use case.
• A competitor’s public price is not proof of its realized price or your customer’s willingness to pay.

For U.S. local or industry market context, the Census Bureau’s Business Builder and business datasets can provide counts and geographic comparisons. Such data can bound a market estimate; it cannot replace interviews or transaction evidence about the specific workflow. Other countries have different data sources and classification systems.

Finish with one decision: pursue a gap, test a different segment, gather missing evidence, or stop. Store the comparison with its date and review trigger. Use choose a problem worth solving to strengthen the customer hypothesis and evaluate builder tools when the decision concerns your own operating stack.