Who you’re really competing with
When founders think about competition, they tend to think about other products. A list of companies. A grid of features. A “competitive landscape” slide.
That list matters. But it almost never captures who you’re really competing with.
Your real competition is whatever your user does instead of using your product. That might be another tool — or it might be a process, a habit, a person, a Google search, a feeling that the problem isn’t worth solving today. Each of those is your competition. Some of them are far harder to beat than any rival product.
Getting this picture right changes how you position, price, and design what you build.
The five categories of competition
When you map your real competition, you’ll usually find five categories underneath.
Direc...
