Octopus Competitive Intelligence

Always the First Steps — Let’s Talk About Competitive Analysis Like It Actually Matters: Weekly Winning Strategies Competitive Analysis Matters. But you know everyone’s chasing tactics. Cold outreach. SEO. Paid ads. More content. Yet most, especially in early-stage startups, skip the most obvious step: Understand your competitors like you understand your product. Not just their features. Not just their pricing. And not just their logos on a pitch deck. I’m talking about understanding their decisions and  why  they make them, because that’s where the real signals hide. So, what are the  first steps ? Here’s the actual list. No fluff. 1. Forget the Product. Follow the behaviour. Too many founders start with competitor feature comparison charts. That’s lazy. Real competitor analysis starts with behaviour: Who are they targeting? What are they saying  first  in their marketing? Where are they putting the most energy: SEO, LinkedIn, YouTube, events? What’s their tone...

How Founders Are Screwing Up Competitive Intelligence Without Even Realising It: Weekly Winning Strategies Startups don’t usually die because the product sucked. Most die because they misread the market. Not because they didn’t  look —but because they looked in all the wrong places. They peek at a few websites, glance at pricing pages, scroll through  LinkedIn , maybe ask  ChatGPT , and tell themselves, “We know what our competitors are doing.” But they don’t. They’ve built a mirror, not a  map . Let’s take this apart. And let’s rebuild it into something that gives you an edge. The big lie: “We’ve done our competitor research.” That phrase is the strategic version of someone saying,  “I read a blog post once.” Real competitive analysis doesn’t happen by reading your competitor’s blog. It happens when you learn how your competitors  think, how  they make decisions, how they react under pressure, and what they  choose  not to build. The stuff t...

You’re pointing at sequencing. And it matters more than many want to admit. Quality competitor analysis stands a better chance of success by looking at the order in which you do things is important. People think execution is about speed. It’s not. It’s about doing the right things in the right order. That’s where the leverage sits. Most competitive intelligence teams—if they exist at all in early-stage companies—run around chasing signals with zero filtering and no process. Many startups build backwards. They start with data. Then they try to guess what it means. Then they try to act. That is a broken way of doing it The right order looks like this: Decide what matters. Define your enemy. Get specific about what you’re watching. Collect the right data. Decide what you’ll ignore. Use what you learn to shape your offers, messaging, and positioning. If you start with the data. You’re already behind. You end up reacting instead of out-positioning. That’s how you slide into feature wars, pr...