Why You Should Ignore Your Competitors

I’ve never understood founders who build companies or products just as a reaction to what their competitors are doing.

They stress all day long figuring out what others are doing and how to keep ahead. (Sure, there are markets where it is imperative to keep your foot ahead but I don’t see how in the tech space.) There are just so many problems to solve, and so many different ways to solve them!

As founders we should focus on building a sustainable company, an amazing team, catering to our clients all while at the same time aligning the company to what our life goals are. This customer-focused approach means prioritizing based on impact, not competitor feature lists.

I’ve started a few companies over the years and all of them are a direct reflection of who I am, what I want in life and how I want to impact others. Back when I started my first company, Ideaware, my main motivator was time & freedom.

After a few years all I wanted was to take care of my team and make sure that they grow. Now I’m taking that from local to a national scale. To add to that now a days my biggest motivation is also my family. This is why your competition shouldn’t matter: it’s about you, your family & your team. It’s about playing the long game. Building something sustainable. Something that makes you happy, that brings you peace of mind because you are helping others.

A company is there to support your own goals, not take them away. A company is there to serve your customers. … and in the intersection of meeting goals and having happy customers is where the secret of a successful, long term company lies. Build around your North Star metric, not your competitor’s roadmap.

The Competition Trap: Why It’s Seductive But Dangerous

Let me start with a confession: I’ve fallen into the competition trap myself.

In 2011, when I was running Ideaware, a competitor launched a feature we didn’t have. My immediate reaction? “We need to build that. Now.”

We dropped our carefully planned roadmap and spent three months building a competitive response. The feature shipped. Our existing customers didn’t care. New customers didn’t sign up because of it. We’d burned a quarter of our year chasing something that didn’t matter.

This happens to founders constantly. Here’s why competitive obsession is so seductive:

1. Competitors Are Visible, Customers Are Invisible

It’s easy to see what your competitors ship. They blog about it. They demo it at conferences. They announce it on Product Hunt.

Your customers’ real problems? Those are hidden in support tickets, quiet churn, and opportunities you never see because people never became customers in the first place.

Competitive intelligence feels productive because it’s tangible. Customer research feels fuzzy and time-consuming. So founders default to watching competitors.

2. It Feels Like Strategy

“We’re being strategic about the competitive landscape” sounds so much better than “We’re just copying what they’re doing.”

But competitive response isn’t strategy. It’s reaction. Strategy means having a differentiated point of view about what customers need and where the market is going. Copying features is the opposite of that.

3. Investors and Boards Ask About It

“What are you doing about [Competitor X]’s new feature?” is a common board meeting question.

This creates pressure to have an answer. The easiest answer is “We’re building our version.”

The harder—but better—answer is “We talked to 20 customers and 3 mentioned it, but none would switch to that competitor for that feature alone. Here’s what they actually care about…”

4. Your Team Brings It Up

When your sales team loses a deal, they’ll often blame a missing feature that a competitor has.

Sometimes this is real. Often it’s easier than admitting they got out-sold, or the prospect wasn’t a good fit, or pricing was the real issue.

Feature parity becomes a crutch to explain away losses instead of improving your actual value proposition.

When Competitive Obsession Kills Companies

I’ve watched this pattern destroy startups:

Year 1: Launch with differentiated vision and strong customer focus. Get traction.

Year 2: Competitor launches adjacent product. Team panics. Build defensive features.

Year 3: Playing feature parity with 2-3 competitors. Product becomes confused. Original differentiation lost.

Year 4: Competitor with more funding launches the same features but faster. You’re now competing on resources, not vision.

Year 5: Acquisition or wind-down because you lost what made you special.

The companies I’ve seen succeed long-term do something different: they ignore the noise and double down on serving their customers better than anyone else.

Real Example: How Ignoring Competition Created Bucket.io’s Success

At Bucket (a feature flagging and experimentation platform I helped scale to a 7-figure exit), we faced fierce competition from LaunchDarkly, Optimizely, and dozens of others.

What competitors were doing (2016-2018):

• Adding complex targeting rules
• Building enterprise governance features
• Expanding into A/B testing platforms
• Raising massive funding rounds

What we did instead:

• Talked to 50+ mid-market product teams about their pain points
• Discovered they were drowning in feature flag debt
• Built simple tools to track and retire old flags
• Created workflows that prevented flag sprawl

The competition wasn’t building this because their enterprise customers didn’t complain about it. But our mid-market customers were bleeding from this problem.

We became the “feature flagging for teams that ship fast” platform. Not the most features. Not the biggest. But the one that solved a real problem for a specific customer segment.

Result: 40% quarter-over-quarter growth for 18 months, category leadership in mid-market, and an acquisition.

If we’d been tracking competitors instead of customers, we’d have built the same governance features everyone else had. We’d have been lost in the crowd.

The Blue Ocean Alternative: Customer-Focused Product Development

I’m a big believer in Blue Ocean Strategy—finding uncontested market space instead of fighting competitors in red oceans.

Here’s how this works in practice:

Instead of Asking “What are competitors building?”

Ask:

• “What job are our customers trying to do that no one is solving well?”
• “Where do customers have to use 3 different tools because no single one does it right?”
• “What do customers tolerate as ‘good enough’ but actually hate?”

Instead of Building Feature Parity

Build:

• The experience only you can deliver based on your unique insights
• Workflows that eliminate steps competitors think are necessary
• Solutions to problems competitors don’t even see as problems

Instead of Competing on Specs

Compete on:

• Customer outcomes and success metrics
• Speed to value (time from signup to first win)
• Specific use cases you solve better than anyone
• Customer experience and support quality

Framework: Customer-Focused Validation (Not Competitor Reaction)

Here’s the process I use to decide what to build:

Step 1: Collect Customer Signals (Not Competitive Intel)

Set up systems to capture:

• Support ticket themes (what are people struggling with?)
• Churn interviews (why did they leave?)
• Usage analytics (what features aren’t being used?)
• Customer development interviews (what are they trying to accomplish?)

Time investment: 5-10 hours per week

This is infinitely more valuable than tracking competitor releases.

Step 2: Quantify the Opportunity

For each potential feature, ask:

• How many customers have this problem?
• How much would solving it increase retention or expansion?
• How much would it reduce support burden?
• Would it open a new customer segment?

Use RICE scoring to prioritize, not competitive pressure.

Step 3: Validate Before Building

Before committing, validate:

• Show mockups to 10 customers, see if they get excited
• Offer it as vaporware in sales calls, see if prospects care
• Build a manual/concierge version first
• Check if solving this would actually change buying decisions

Step 4: Measure Customer Impact, Not Feature Parity

After shipping, track:

• Adoption rate (what % of customers use it?)
• Impact on retention/expansion
• Reduction in support tickets or workarounds
• NPS improvement

Don’t track: “Do we now have the same features as Competitor X?”

When You Should Actually Pay Attention to Competitors

I’m not saying completely ignore your competition. There are specific times when competitive intelligence matters:

1. When Defining Your Differentiation

You need to know what competitors offer so you can articulate why you’re different. This isn’t about copying—it’s about positioning.

Example: “Unlike [Competitor] which focuses on enterprise governance, we’re built for fast-moving product teams who ship daily.”

2. When You’re Losing Deals to the Same Objection

If sales is consistently losing to “we’re going with X because they have Y feature” and the pattern is real (not just excuses), investigate.

But validate: Talk to those lost prospects. Was it really that feature, or price, or timing, or something else?

3. When a Competitor Changes the Market Dynamics

If a major competitor drops prices 50%, or gets acquired by a platform player, or pivots into your core market—that matters. The game has changed.

But your response still shouldn’t be “copy what they did.” It should be “how does this change what customers need from us?”

4. When You’re Creating Sales and Marketing Content

You need to know what prospects are comparing you against so you can create helpful comparison content, competitive battle cards for sales, and positioning that highlights your differentiation.

But this is marketing intelligence, not product strategy.

The Long Game: Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Here’s what I’ve learned across 18 years and 5 startups: sustainable competitive advantages don’t come from features.

Features are easy to copy. What’s hard to copy:

Your Customer Relationships

When you deeply understand your customers, you build things competitors don’t even see as opportunities. You earn trust that makes customers forgive missteps and give you time to improve.

This is why I spend more time in customer Slack channels and on support calls than I do researching competitors.

Your Company Culture and Values

The way your team makes decisions, treats customers, and solves problems creates differentiation that can’t be copied.

At Ideaware, we prioritized slow, sustainable growth and team longevity over rapid scaling. This meant our teams had context and continuity that high-churn competitors couldn’t match.

Your Unique Insights About the Problem Space

When you’re focused on deeply understanding a problem space, you develop insights competitors don’t have.

Example: We realized at Qrvey that our analytics customers didn’t primarily need more chart types (what we initially thought). They needed white-label branding and embedded analytics that wouldn’t require re-implementing when they rebranded. This insight came from being in the trenches with customers, not from studying competitors.

Your Speed of Learning and Iteration

Companies that ship, measure, and iterate based on customer feedback move faster than those stuck in competitive response mode.

The competitor-obsessed company waits to see what rivals launch, then builds their version (3-6 month lag).

The customer-obsessed company ships experiments weekly, learns what works, and compounds improvements.

Over a year, the customer-focused company is 10x iterations ahead.

Practical Guidelines: How to Actually Ignore Competitors

Okay, so philosophically you agree. But how do you actually do this day-to-day?

For Founders:

1. Limit competitive research time: Dedicate 1 hour per quarter to competitive analysis. That’s it. Spend 10 hours per week on customer conversations instead.

2. Ban competitor screenshots from product meetings: If someone brings up “Competitor X has this feature,” the next question must be “How many of our customers asked for this?”

3. Track customer outcomes, not feature counts: Your metrics dashboard should show customer retention, NPS, time-to-value—not “% feature parity with top competitors.”

4. Build in public: When you share your roadmap publicly with customers, you commit to your vision rather than reactive changes.

For Product Teams:

1. Customer advisory boards, not competitive analysis docs: Quarterly sessions with customers to understand their evolving needs beats monthly competitive intelligence reports.

2. Usage data over feature lists: Spend more time in analytics seeing what customers actually use than in competitor signups seeing what they offer.

3. Solve jobs-to-be-done, not feature gaps: When planning features, start with “what job is the customer trying to do” not “what feature are we missing vs. competitors.”

For Sales Teams:

1. Lead with differentiation: Train reps to lead with what you do uniquely well, not feature comparison matrices.

2. Qualify out bad-fit prospects: If someone wants you to be exactly like a competitor, they should use that competitor. Focus on prospects who value your differentiation.

3. Lost deal analysis that goes deeper: Don’t accept “they had feature X” as the loss reason. Dig deeper: Was it really that feature, or price, or trust, or timing?

What This Actually Looks Like: A Week in Practice

Here’s what customer-focused (not competitor-focused) product development looks like in practice:

Monday:

• Review support ticket themes from last week
• Notice 12 tickets about confusing onboarding flow
• Schedule calls with 3 customers who mentioned this

Tuesday:

• Customer calls confirm onboarding confusion
• Discover the real issue: unclear pricing on first screen
• Draft solution: restructure pricing to be transparent upfront

Wednesday:

• Test new onboarding flow with 5 new trial signups (with permission)
• 4/5 complete onboarding vs. 2/5 previously
• Ship change to 25% of new signups

Thursday:

• Monitor metrics: onboarding completion up 60%
• Customer interviews: pricing clarity improved satisfaction
• Decision: roll out to 100%

Friday:

• Document learnings
• Identify next customer pain point to solve
• Plan next week’s improvements

Notice what’s missing? No competitive analysis. No “what is Competitor X building?” The entire week is customer-driven.

The Intersection: Where It All Comes Together

A company is there to support your own goals, not take them away. A company is there to serve your customers.

The intersection of these two things—your vision and your customers’ needs—is where magic happens.

When you’re competitor-obsessed, you lose both:

• You’re not pursuing your unique vision (you’re copying theirs)
• You’re not solving your customers’ real problems (you’re solving hypothetical competitive gaps)

When you’re customer-obsessed:

• You build products aligned with your strengths and vision
• You solve real problems customers will pay for
• You create differentiation that’s hard to copy
• You build a sustainable business that supports your life goals

This is why companies like Basecamp, Gumroad, and ConvertKit succeed long-term. They have opinionated visions, serve specific customer segments deeply, and largely ignore what competitors are doing.

Conclusion: Play Your Own Game

After 18 years building companies, here’s what I know for sure:

The companies that win long-term are the ones that stay true to their vision while obsessively serving their customers.

The companies that lose are the ones that get distracted by competitive noise and lose sight of both.

Build for your customers. Build for your vision. Build something that makes you proud.

Your competitors are playing their game. Play yours.

And here’s the beautiful irony: when you stop worrying about competitors and focus on serving customers better than anyone else, you often end up beating the competition anyway.

But by then, you won’t care.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I completely ignore what my competitors are doing?

Not completely. Spend 1 hour per quarter on competitive analysis for positioning and marketing purposes. But don’t let competitor actions drive your product roadmap. Use 10x that time talking to customers instead. Know what competitors offer so you can differentiate, but build based on customer needs, not competitive gaps.

How do I respond when investors or board members ask about competitors?

Show that you’re aware of the landscape but customer-focused. Say: “We track competitors for positioning, but our roadmap is driven by customer feedback and data. Here’s what our customers are asking for and why it’s different from what competitors are building.” Back it up with customer quotes and usage data.

What if I’m losing deals to competitors with more features?

First, validate it’s actually about features. Talk to lost prospects—often it’s price, timing, or trust, not features. If it truly is a critical feature gap affecting multiple deals, then consider it. But prioritize based on how many customers need it, not just because a competitor has it. One lost deal isn’t a pattern.

How do I find a Blue Ocean strategy for my market?

Look for customer jobs that are underserved. Ask: What do customers tolerate as “good enough”? Where do they use multiple tools because no single one solves their problem? What do they complain about that competitors ignore? Interview 20+ customers, identify patterns in pain points, then build for those instead of copying competitor feature lists.

When should I actually pay attention to competitor moves?

When: (1) A major competitor changes market dynamics (big acquisition, 50% price drop), (2) You’re consistently losing deals to the same objection, (3) You need positioning for sales/marketing. Don’t pay attention when: (1) They launch a new feature, (2) They raise funding, (3) They post on social media about their roadmap.