Day 530 - Watch your competitors - https://golifelog.com/posts/watch-your-competitors-1655168845501
They always say, don't watch your competitors. Just do your own thing, run your own race.
There's certainly wisdom in that.
It helps with focus. It doesn't distract you from your work. It won't lead to unnecessary comparison.
But there's also lots of underrated opportunities and advantages from watching your competitors in ways that doesn't affect your focus/motivation:
- Watch when they introduce new pricing, new redesigns - did it trigger a mass exodus of disgruntled customers? Can you capitalize on that and grab some of that market share?
- Watch their reviews on Google or other platforms. What are users complaining about? What features are missing? What existing features can be improved? Go build those missing features (of course, the ones that **also** align to your product vision), go market how your product doesn't have that problem.
- Watch Google Trends for searches for "X alternative", whether the trend is growing. @jakobgreenfeld(https://twitter.com/jakobgreenfeld/status/1535260530830479360) talks about this well for popular SaaS tools like Ahrefs, Sendgrid and Miro and checked for each of them if people are hungry for alternatives.
- Watch news of your VC-funded competitors shutting down due to the economic downturn, and see if you can rush in to fill the market gap. What didn't work at VC-funded level can work for indie hacker bootstrapped level.
- Watch if they stumble, get bad PR, have downtimes. Can you capitalize on that? Make a funny meme or joke about it? Of course, always remember only to punch up (if your competitors are huge enterprises). Don't be mean if your competitors are other indies.
*What other opportunities are there from watching your competitors?*
There's certainly wisdom in that.
It helps with focus. It doesn't distract you from your work. It won't lead to unnecessary comparison.
But there's also lots of underrated opportunities and advantages from watching your competitors in ways that doesn't affect your focus/motivation:
- Watch when they introduce new pricing, new redesigns - did it trigger a mass exodus of disgruntled customers? Can you capitalize on that and grab some of that market share?
- Watch their reviews on Google or other platforms. What are users complaining about? What features are missing? What existing features can be improved? Go build those missing features (of course, the ones that **also** align to your product vision), go market how your product doesn't have that problem.
- Watch Google Trends for searches for "X alternative", whether the trend is growing. @jakobgreenfeld(https://twitter.com/jakobgreenfeld/status/1535260530830479360) talks about this well for popular SaaS tools like Ahrefs, Sendgrid and Miro and checked for each of them if people are hungry for alternatives.
- Watch news of your VC-funded competitors shutting down due to the economic downturn, and see if you can rush in to fill the market gap. What didn't work at VC-funded level can work for indie hacker bootstrapped level.
- Watch if they stumble, get bad PR, have downtimes. Can you capitalize on that? Make a funny meme or joke about it? Of course, always remember only to punch up (if your competitors are huge enterprises). Don't be mean if your competitors are other indies.
*What other opportunities are there from watching your competitors?*
