Building a startup is costly, time-consuming, and hard! 

Most startup founders I talk with love their products and idea. 

And sadly, it’s easy to neglect the market demand for the product. 

It’s probably a big reason almost 90% of startups end up failing 

But what can we do to validate market demand and minimize the risk of failure? 

That’s what we’ll be talking about in this email. Let’s jump into it 👇

With proper competitor market research, you can Understand

1. Opportunities and Limitations
2. Current market dynamics
3. Gaps in the Market
4. Customer needs

Do this RIGHT, and you can: 

1. Validate startup idea 
2. Find Product-Market-Fit 
3. Avoid failing with your startups 
4. Develop features with external agency

Understand Direct and Indirect Competitors 

Direct competitors offer similar products or services and compete for the same customers. 

Indirect competitors offer different products or services, but may still be targeting the same customer base. 

Use the tools below to find these competitors. 

Similarweb – Check and analyze web traffic for sites 

Ahref – SEO tool, analyze competitors 

Sparktoro – Instantly discover what your audience reads, watches, listens to, and follows. 

Look at reviews of your competitors for where they fail.

The sites below are the most popular, but you could just search “competitor name reviews” on Google. 

1. G2
2. Capterra
3. Trustpilot
4. GetApp

Go to 1-star reviews and see what people are complaining about. Find common pains and problems 

Find Gaps in the market: 

Being an early stage startup, it is important to find gaps in the market and position your product to fill these gaps, but it’s also important to make sure that these gaps help your customers get to their desired results. If they don’t, Find something else. 

Here are some QAs to consider:. 

Should you price with respect to your competitors? 

Price depends on supply and demand. How much do people want what you are offering, and how well do other products meet their demand? 

ClickFunnel is charging 10X price compared to other Funnel Builders. Still they get a major share in the market. 

Why? Because their positioning and promotion make it seem like it meets the demand of users better than other similar services.

Nail this and you’ll never have to worry about pricing. 

I also suggest looking at these three pricing models: 

• Follow the Van Westendorp Pricing Model
• Checkout the The Sequoia Guide to Pricing
• Or learn from Pricing low-touch SaaS by Stripe

What if I don’t have any competitors? 

If you fall under this category, then there are two cases. 

1. Your product has competitors, you just don’t know about them yet. 
2. You’re going into a market with no customers yet. 

Either case is not good for you and your product. 

Is having a competition a Good Sign or Bad Sign? 

I see having competitors is good in these ways: 

Proof of Concept: Competitors validate the market’s appetite for your product.

Learning from Mistakes: Analyze negative reviews for insights into where your competitors are failing.

Identify Market Gaps: Discover gaps in the market. You can then use these gaps to Define a USP (Unique-Selling-Proposition) for your product. 

Don’t copy every cool feature from your competitor or build everything their customers are complaining about. But doing this right will help you iterate a better product, Understand customer behaviors and buying decisions. So don’t overlook it in any way. Start with it 

That’s all for this week 

See ya! 

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P.S. I’m taking FREE 1:1 coaching calls for anyone who might be interested in taking my course on Maven. 

We’ll discuss and evaluate your current situation and business and figure out if this course is the right fit for you. 

If you’re still sitting on the sidelines. Start here 👇

Signup for the waitlist here 

(Your Free coaching call will be booked once you sign up for the waitlist)