I built Rivallens because understanding AI startups was harder than it should be
Every time I stumbled upon some interesting product built with AI, it took me ages to research information about that product to understand:
• What problem does it solve
• Who is it for
• How does it make money
• Why does anyone use it
• Is it any good
• How big is it's market
And most importantly, the insights I got from this research became obsolete really quick as the product continued to update it's features, pricing, team, github repos, communities and more. Founders that wanted to keep track of their competitors' growth couldn't do it efficiently - it was hard to get a grasp of where exactly the product was at in it's development cycle, and what were the signals of growth.
This process of manually collecting this information became tedious for me, after doing it for hundreds of products, and so I decided to build rivallens. The idea is really simple - take any product's url, get insights about it's development, and keep track of it's changes over time.
I want founders, builders, and product teams to have better access to product positioning, pricing, target audience, competitors, growth signals, overall market opportunity, and product evolution to help them:
• Research products faster
• Find opportunities easier
• Stay ahead of the curve
If you're a founder, I'd love to hear from you: how are you currently tracking your competitors and the changes in your market?
I'm curious what convinced you continuously tracking product change is the real job rather than simply helping founders research competitors faster.
From the founders you've spoken with, do they struggle more with finding competitive information in the first place, or with knowing which changes actually matter once they're already tracking a market?
That's a really good question.
My current view is that the initial research problem is relatively easy to understand: founders need to know who the competitors are, what they offer, how they price, and how they position themselves.
But the bigger problem seems to start after that.
Competitors don't stay static. Pricing changes, new features appear, positioning shifts, new integrations get launched, and sometimes a seemingly small product change is actually a signal of a much bigger strategic move.
So I don't think the value is simply "track everything."
It's more about helping founders answer:
"What changed, and does this actually matter to me?"
That's the part I'm particularly interested in with Rivallens.
I see one-time competitor research as the starting point, while continuous monitoring is what makes the research useful over time.
I'm still validating this assumption, though, so I'd actually be interested in your perspective: when you track competitors, what kind of change usually gets your attention?
That makes sense. The “what changed, and does it actually matter?” question seems like the more valuable layer once the basic competitive research is already available.
I’d be interested in continuing the conversation around that. What’s the best email to reach you on?