When the Founder Chooses the Competitors, Challenge the List

Founders often know their rivals exceptionally well. They remember the early competition, the lost pitches and the business that copied an idea. That history can provide valuable context. It can also make the competitor list a record of personal significance rather than current customer choice.

A rival that mattered five years ago may now serve a different audience. A new alternative may attract customers without resembling the business at all. The founder's confidence should be treated as a source of hypotheses, not the final boundary of the investigation.

Ask the leadership team to build the list independently before discussing it. Then compare the names with those mentioned in recent enquiries, lost opportunities and customer conversations. The gaps are useful. They reveal where internal attention differs from the market the business is trying to win.

Distinguish admiration from competition

A business may feature on the list because the founder admires its design, dislikes its publicity or wants similar recognition. Those reactions do not establish that customers consider it as an alternative. Keep aspirational references separate from the competitive set used for commercial decisions.

Likewise, a small or unfamiliar operator may deserve attention if it solves the same customer occasion particularly well. Scale and visibility are imperfect proxies for relevance. A local experience can compete with a much larger brand for a specific visit.

Explore the alternative of doing nothing. A potential customer may postpone the event, stay at home or use an existing internal solution. Ignoring those options makes the market appear more active and the opportunity larger than the evidence supports.

Make the challenge about the decision

The conversation should not become a referendum on the founder's judgement. Tie it to a concrete choice: which audience to pursue, which proposition to test or which investment to make. Ask what competitor evidence is needed for that decision and which assumptions remain untested.

Invite someone to argue for the strongest alternative explanation. If the team believes a rival wins on price, could availability or clarity explain the same pattern? If it believes a new entrant is irrelevant, what customer evidence would change that view?

A useful list is revisable. Give important assumptions an owner and review date, and retain the reason for changes. This helps the organisation learn without requiring anyone to pretend they always held the latest view.

The founder's experience remains valuable when it opens better questions. It becomes limiting when it closes them too early. Q Spy can support a wider scan, while customer evidence determines which alternatives deserve a place in the strategic conversation.

Further reading: Why competitors are not your strategy.

Illustrative stock photograph. Photo: Arina Krasnikova via Pexels. Image licence.