competitive-analysis

# 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.