Stop Building Random Features: How to Actually Do Competitive Analysis
John Doe
Your roadmap is probably wrong.
Let me guess: you looked at Notion, saw they had databases, and now you're building databases. Or you noticed Slack's threading model and decided that's obviously what users want. Classic mistake.
Real competitive analysis isn't feature tourism. It's intelligence work.
The Problem: Everyone's Doing Theater
I've watched teams spend months on "competitive research" that amounts to:
This is how you build a worse version of someone else's product.
The truth is, most competitive analysis is just procrastination dressed up as strategy. You're not learning why competitors made decisions — you're just copying the visible outcomes.
Why This Is Harder Than It Looks
Real competitive gap analysis requires understanding three layers:
Surface layer: What features exist Strategic layer: Why they built those features Market layer: What problems they're solving (and ignoring)
Most teams never get past the surface. They see Figma's multiplayer cursors and think "we need cursors too!" without understanding that Figma's entire architecture was designed around real-time collaboration from day one.
You can't just bolt on their features. The decisions that matter happened years ago in their system design.
A Framework That Actually Works
Here's how I approach competitive analysis when it matters:
Step 1: Map the Job-to-be-Done Landscape
Don't start with competitors. Start with user jobs.
I use this simple structure:
Job: [What users are trying to accomplish]
Current solutions: [How they solve it today]
Pain points: [Where current solutions fail]
Competitive responses: [How each competitor addresses the pain]
Example from a recent analysis:
Job: Design handoff between designers and developers
Current solutions:
- Export from Figma, upload to Zeplin
- Screenshots + Slack messages
- Screen sharing calls
Pain points:
- Information scattered across tools
- Specs get outdated
- No single source of truth
Competitor responses:
- Figma: Dev Mode (all specs in one place)
- Sketch: Cloud inspector
- Adobe XD: Share for Development mode
This immediately shows you the real competitive battlefield. Not features — jobs.
Step 2: Reverse-Engineer Their Strategy
For each major competitor, I try to understand their theory of the market:
What do they believe about users?
Notion believes users want maximum flexibility (even at the cost of complexity). Linear believes users want opinionated workflows that eliminate decisions.
What constraints are they optimizing for?
Slack optimizes for enterprise sales cycles. Discord optimizes for community engagement. Same problem space, totally different constraints.
Where are they placing bets?
Look at their hiring, their acquisitions, their conference talks. Figma hiring game engine developers tells you something about their multiplayer ambitions that their current features don't.
Step 3: Find the Gaps (The Right Way)
This is where most analysis goes wrong. People look for missing features. I look for three types of gaps:
Execution gaps: They have the feature, but it sucks Strategy gaps: They're solving the wrong problem Market gaps: Nobody's serving this user segment
Example: When Stripe launched, the gap wasn't "no payment processing exists." The gap was "existing solutions require talking to sales people and waiting weeks for integration."
Execution gap, not feature gap.
Step 4: Turn Intelligence Into Action
Here's my template for translating competitive insights into roadmap decisions:
## Competitive Intel Summary
**Market Position**: Where we sit vs competitors
**Their Next Moves**: What they're likely building based on hiring/acquisitions
**Our Advantage**: What we can do that they can't
**Threat Level**: How urgent is competitive response
## Roadmap Implications
**Defend**: Features we must build to avoid losing users
**Differentiate**: Capabilities that create unique value
**Disrupt**: Opportunities to change the game entirely
**Timeline**: 3/6/12 month priorities based on competitive threats
Real Example: How We Beat Incumbents
We were building a developer tool competing against established players with more features, more users, more everything.
Our competitive analysis revealed something interesting: every competitor optimized for power users. Complex workflows, tons of configuration options, enterprise-focused pricing.
But developers spending 20+ hours a week in these tools weren't the whole market. What about developers who needed the tool occasionally? The ones getting frustrated with 30-minute setup processes for 10-minute tasks?
Gap identified: simple, fast workflows for casual usage.
Instead of building more power features, we optimized for time-to-value. One-click setup, smart defaults, inline help. Our retention among casual users destroyed the competition.
(The incumbents are still adding more enterprise features. Missing the point entirely.)
The Metrics That Matter
Don't measure competitive analysis by features shipped. Measure by:
Market share gained in specific segments
User retention compared to competitive switches
Sales cycle length when competing head-to-head
Win/loss ratios in competitive deals
Track these monthly. If your competitive strategy isn't moving these numbers, you're doing research theater.
When to Ignore Competitors Completely
Sometimes the best competitive strategy is to ignore competition entirely.
If you're creating a new market category, competitive analysis can be actively harmful. You'll optimize for problems that don't matter to your users yet.
Instagram didn't analyze photo-sharing apps. They analyzed social behavior. Slack didn't analyze enterprise messaging. They analyzed team communication patterns.
Know the difference between improving an existing market and creating a new one.
Stop Copying, Start Competing
Good competitive analysis makes you build different features, not the same features better.
If your analysis concludes "we need everything they have plus our special sauce," you haven't learned anything useful. You've just created a longer backlog.
The goal isn't feature parity. It's market advantage.
Now go delete half your roadmap and focus on the gaps that actually matter.