HN Explorer

Ask HN: How do you research your competition?

8 points by slindstr ↗ HN
Knowing your competition is a very important part of business and I'm curious to get your input as to how you figure out who your direct and indirect competition is.

I recently needed to do a specific task and while there were a couple of solutions out there, I really disliked their implementations (basically they were too difficult to use). I think I can do a much better job in implementing the idea (which I am working on now), but I'd really like to have a better picture of who's out there doing the same thing.

Do you have any suggestions for finding potential competitors aside from just mindlessly Googling words and phrases?

Thanks in advance!

13 comments

[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 31.8 ms ] thread
olalonde
I usually gather information through those sites/techniques:

- http://www.crunchbase.com

- Google search "COMPANY alternative"

- Twitter search "COMPANY"

* Where COMPANY is either the company/product name.

slindstr
Thanks for the insight! I'm already using Google and Twitter in that way and Crunchbase seems pretty sweet but after doing a couple of searches and clicking some companies it looks like there's a lot of entries for tiny/small companies that don't exist anymore :(
notahacker
www.moreofit.com is specifically designed to find similarly themed websites via Delicious tagging
metachris
+ Google search "related:COMPANY"
cperciva
how you figure out who your direct and indirect competition is

I talk to my customers. They're very good at telling me "I was using X until I discovered Tarsnap" and (far less often) "I'm not going to be using Tarsnap any more because I'm switching to X".

slindstr
That's a great point and I think if you're making a new implementation of a product like I am and you have a general idea of who your customer could potentially be just asking them could be very helpful, though it may be difficult to get a response. It's funny how this is probably one of the simplest and most obvious ways, and yet it completely eluded me until I read your post. Thanks!
AllanRwaka
Work for them :)
slindstr
You gotta be able to find 'fm to work for 'em :)
mattgratt
One trick I found for researching competitors (once you know they're competitors): - Do a linkedin search for the competitive company - Pull the names of the CTO and senior technical staff - Do a patent search based on those names
photon_off
If they have a URL an are somewhat popular, I use my website: http://www.moreofit.com to find similar services and companies. By noting the tags you can gain tremendous insight into the breadth and depth of the market space. By altering the sort popularity, you can quickly note who's doing well.
slindstr
Wow that's a really cool site! How long did it take you to make? Are you making money off of it yet?