Strategy: Competitive analysis
Showing 52 articles for Strategy: Competitive analysis.
Long-term planning
Podcast
Why tracking trends is no longer enough: Amy Webb on convergences
Masters of Scale
March 19, 2026
Long-term planning
10
Competitive analysis
8
AI strategy & adoption
7
- Trends alone are insufficient — convergences are what actually reshape industries.
- Programmable biology will transform medicine, agriculture, energy, and warfare.
- China is building AI infrastructure for 1.4 billion people; the US has no plan.
Competitive analysis
YouTube
AI makes everything easy — and that's why it won't give you an edge
Alex M H Smith
February 26, 2026
Competitive analysis
9
Identity & self-belief
5
AI strategy & adoption
5
- Abundant capabilities lose value — scarcity, not quality, is what markets pay for.
- Content, marketing automation, and software are already commoditising fast.
- Relationships, judgment, and original thinking remain genuinely hard and rare.
Databricks: how a research lab built a platform data companies depend on
Business Breakdowns
January 8, 2026
Business models
9
Origin stories
8
Competitive analysis
6
- Why open source success is a curse without a genuinely better paid product
- How coining 'lake house' turned a ridiculed term into an industry standard
- Databricks runs free cash flow positive at $4B ARR with no GPU infrastructure
Competitive analysis
YouTube
You don't need an original idea to win in business
Joanna Wiebe
December 11, 2025
Competitive analysis
9
Branding
8
- Pioneers fund the market; settlers — like Google — capture the value.
- TikTok copied Vine and won purely on a superior algorithm.
- Liquid Death built a $1.4B brand selling water with attitude alone.
Competitive analysis
YouTube
Nine strategy secrets for building a truly differentiated business
Alex M H Smith
November 11, 2025
- Being 'better' than rivals just makes you the same as them.
- Sacrifice is the only source of ideas competitors won't dare copy.
- Look to competitors' blind spots, not customer research, for breakthroughs.
Competitive analysis
Podcast
OpenAI's Sora app and the threat to social media's survival
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
October 20, 2025
Competitive analysis
10
AI strategy & adoption
7
- Social media giants abandoned their moats by chasing TikTok's engagement model.
- Sora out-slops TikTok — but $200/month pricing starves its recommendation engine of inventory.
- OpenAI's pivot to ads and erotica signals GPT-5 didn't deliver the promised leap.
Competitive analysis
YouTube
Seven moats for AI startups: applying the Seven Powers framework
Y Combinator
October 3, 2025
Competitive analysis
10
AI strategy & adoption
8
Long-term planning
6
- Speed is the only moat that matters before you have traction.
- SaaS incumbents' per-seat pricing is an AI-era structural Achilles heel.
- Data flywheels and eval loops compound into moats competitors cannot buy.
Dumb vs. smart business strategy: three critical distinctions
Alex M H Smith
August 12, 2025
Business models
9
Competitive analysis
9
- Goals are not strategies — a real strategy answers how, not what.
- Being better makes you the same; only being different lets you win.
- If your competitors agree with your strategy, it isn't one.
Competitive analysis
YouTube
How to find your unfair strategic advantage
Alex M H Smith
July 3, 2025
Competitive analysis
9
Vision & mission
6
- Your best advantage is probably the thing you're ignoring
- Low effort, high return signals where your real edge is
- Ten asset categories reveal non-replicable advantages you already own
Competitive analysis
YouTube
Five rare strategic questions to unlock business growth
Alex M H Smith
June 10, 2025
Competitive analysis
9
Niche selection
8
Branding
5
- Your true competitors may not be the brands that look like you
- Trader Joe's turned a glaring weakness into a revenue-per-foot record
- Oatly grew a category by targeting people who didn't want oat milk
Competitive analysis
Podcast
How founders compete with giants: retail, restaurants, and the messy middle
How I Built This with Guy Raz
June 5, 2025
Competitive analysis
9
Branding
6
Cash flow management
5
- Retail buyers ignore single-SKU brands — here's how to fix that
- Chipotle next door isn't the threat; price competition is
- Cashflow gets worse before it gets better when you enter retail
Why most businesses struggle: the leverage problem
Alex M H Smith
May 20, 2025
Niche selection
9
Customer discovery
6
Competitive analysis
5
- Better messaging won't fix a business with no leverage.
- Leverage means high demand for something only you sell.
- Three creative moves — disagreement, difference, duplication — create it.
A practical framework for B2B SaaS positioning
Startups For the Rest of Us
April 29, 2025
Niche selection
8
Competitive analysis
7
Branding
5
- Buyers shop by workflow, not outcome — your messaging must match.
- Segment by what the customer is doing, not just company size.
- Dominate one narrow niche before expanding to the next segment.
Competitive analysis
Podcast
How to compete, grow culture, and think about AI agents as a bootstrapped SaaS founder
Startups For the Rest of Us
April 22, 2025
Competitive analysis
9
Culture building
7
Branding
6
- Your brand is your biggest asset at $2–3M ARR — exploit it.
- AI agents will reshape SaaS edges, not destroy the whole ecosystem.
- VC funding makes rivals dangerous only if the founding team can execute.
Competitive analysis
YouTube
How Felicis Ventures applies the 10x principle to back unicorns
EO
April 16, 2025
Competitive analysis
9
Fundraising & VC
7
Resilience & grit
6
- Why your startup must be 10x better, cheaper, or faster to matter
- Markets beat everything — pick the wrong one and no founder survives
- Felicis iterated its pitch deck 107 times before landing the first yes