How I stopped doing competitor research wrong!
i used to open 12 tabs, copy stuff into a Notion doc, and end up with a list of features nobody cared about.
it told me what competitors did. never why they were winning.
so we built a small tool "CompetitorSnap" to force ourselves to think differently. instead of features, it maps positioning. strengths, weaknesses, messaging angle, and how each player frames the problem.
we ran it on Stripe's market as a test. six competitors. same core product. however, completely different positioning.
here's what jumped out:
every player sacrifices at least one of three things - simplicity, power, or flexibility. nobody holds all three. PayPal and Square win on simplicity but hit a ceiling at scale. Adyen is powerful but intimidating. Braintree is flexible but developer-only. Amazon Pay and WePay are ecosystem plays - strong inside a closed world, invisible outside it.
that gap - simple + powerful + flexible - is exactly where Stripe lives. and they don't just win on product. they win because they own that framing in the market.
the insight wasn't in the features. it was in the trade-offs. that's what we're trying to build CompetitorSnap around - not more data, but the pattern underneath it.
still early. would genuinely love to know: how do you do competitor research? features, positioning, gut feel, word of mouth - or just trial and error?
👉 CompetitorSnap (https://www.competitorsnap.com/) if you want to try it on your own market.
I think it's a combination, but I'd put more weight on positioning and changes over time.
Features alone can be misleading. Two products can have almost identical feature lists but target completely different users or have very different business models.
I'd also pay attention to what changes after launch — pricing, positioning, integrations, messaging, and what users start asking for.
Those changes can reveal more than a static feature comparison.
Interesting angle — especially the part about trade-offs between simplicity, power and flexibility. In larger transformation projects I often see something similar on the process side: organizations try to optimise all three at once and end up losing clarity instead.
What helped me personally was stepping out of the normal working environment for a few days with other independent builders or consultants and mapping positioning questions together instead of feature lists. The conversation usually shifts quickly from “what exists” to “what actually creates advantage”.
Curious whether others here also do positioning work collaboratively or mostly alone?