Strategy: Competitive analysis
Showing 52 articles for Strategy: Competitive analysis.
Competitive analysis
Podcast
Ryanair's low-cost obsession: how scale beats the airline curse
Business Breakdowns
February 22, 2023
Competitive analysis
9
Unit economics
7
Case studies
6
- Why Ryanair's 31-euro unit cost makes new rivals economically irrational
- COVID bankrupted Ryanair's competitors faster than O'Leary ever could
- Negative working capital lets Ryanair return 75% of earnings while still growing
Competitive analysis
Podcast
How FanDuel built a 50% market share in US sports betting
Masters of Scale
February 9, 2023
Competitive analysis
9
Growth hacking
7
Pricing strategy
5
- The house doesn't always win — and FanDuel prefers it that way
- Pre-existing fantasy users gave FanDuel a compounding first-mover edge
- Three biggest US states still illegal — the growth story isn't over
Competitive analysis
Podcast
Hermes: how six generations of family stewardship built the world's most defensible luxury brand
Business Breakdowns
January 11, 2023
Competitive analysis
9
Branding
7
Pricing strategy
6
- Hermes pulls hit products to avoid ubiquity — and the board applauds.
- 40% operating margins with zero design, technology, or competitive risk.
- Six generations of family ownership repelled the world's richest acquirer.
Competitive analysis
Podcast
Floor & Decor: How a specialty flooring retailer built a durable retail moat
Business Breakdowns
December 7, 2022
Competitive analysis
9
Unit economics
7
Case studies
6
- Direct sourcing from 240+ suppliers gives pricing power Home Depot can't match
- Pro loyalty programme triples spend — recurring customers, not one-time buyers
- 500-store target implies a path to $15B revenue and $1.7B net profit
Competitive analysis
YouTube
Avoiding common small business mistakes: validation, competition, and growth
Semrush
November 29, 2022
Competitive analysis
9
MVP & prototyping
7
Growth hacking
7
- Why validating with real money beats any focus group or survey
- Different beats better — how to stand out when products seem identical
- Own your audience: why one platform dependency can take you to zero
Business operating systems
Podcast
Peter Thiel's Zero to One: Build something new, own the market
Founders
November 22, 2022
Business operating systems
10
Competitive analysis
9
Prospecting & outreach
6
- Competitive markets destroy profits — monopoly is the only goal worth building toward.
- Poor sales, not bad product, is the most common cause of startup failure.
- Founders who plan decades ahead always outperform those chasing short-term growth.
How to measure market size and digital market share
Semrush
October 4, 2022
Market research
9
Competitive analysis
8
Niche selection
5
- TAM and SAM reveal growth potential; SOM is just your starting point
- A 10% market share can mean leadership or mediocrity — context decides
- Growth quadrant shows whether competitors are rising threats or fading giants
Using SWT analysis to navigate company stress and change
Bill Gallagher
May 23, 2022
Pivoting
8
Competitive analysis
7
- SWT replaces SWOT with a deeper, wider-ranging trends analysis
- Scan culture, arts, and society — not just your own industry
- Map trends to strengths for opportunities, to weaknesses for defence
Competitive analysis
YouTube
How to compete with Amazon and Google without losing focus
Y Combinator
April 8, 2022
Competitive analysis
9
Product-market fit
6
Resilience & grit
5
- Competitor press and fundraising reveal nothing about their actual product quality
- Structural advantage only wins when paired with a good-enough product
- Instacart and Cruise survived trillion-dollar incumbents by building better products
Competitive analysis
Podcast
Applying Seven Powers to Platform Businesses
Acquired
April 6, 2022
Competitive analysis
9
Business models
8
Product-market fit
6
- A flywheel proves product-market fit but says nothing about power.
- Multi-homing silently arbitrages away a platform's scale advantage.
- High preference heterogeneity is what makes a platform's lead compound.
Competitive analysis
Podcast
Seven Powers: A Framework for Competitive Advantage
Acquired
December 8, 2021
Competitive analysis
10
Business models
6
- Power requires both a benefit competitors lack and a barrier preventing imitation—most startups miss the second part
- Seven specific sources of competitive advantage emerge only during market takeoff when strategies can still be established
- Counter positioning lets new entrants win because incumbents cannot cannibalize their profitable existing business models
Competitive analysis
Podcast
Michael Mauboussin on moats, skill vs luck, and decision-making
Acquired
October 5, 2021
Competitive analysis
9
Unit economics
7
Deep work & focus
5
- As skill levels converge, luck explains more outcomes — even in investing.
- Stock prices embed expectations; reverse-engineering them beats building your own model.
- Intangible investment now dwarfs capex, making traditional accounting misleading.
How Facebook built and sustains its $100 billion advertising business
Business Breakdowns
June 30, 2021
Business models
9
Paid ads
7
Competitive analysis
6
- Facebook's self-reinforcing flywheel: data → targeting → ad spend → more data
- Only Google and Facebook can deliver scale, cost, and customer quality together
- The next platform shift after mobile is Facebook's deepest existential risk
Competitive analysis
Podcast
Invisalign: how patents, vertical integration, and litigation built a dental monopoly
Business Breakdowns
June 2, 2021
Competitive analysis
9
Case studies
7
Unit economics
6
- Invisalign held 90–95% of clear aligners for 20 years via patents alone
- 75% gross margins hidden inside a market most investors misread
- Patent expiry in 2017 changed almost nothing — software moat held
Competitive analysis
Podcast
Building SaaS Through Focus, Competition, and Key Metrics
Startups For the Rest of Us
November 17, 2020
Competitive analysis
9
Funnels
8
Niche selection
7
- Focus on one idea at a time; validate in weeks, not months, then ship fast.
- Identify unserved customer segments competitors ignore; dominate those instead of fighting directly.
- Fix retention and churn before optimizing traffic; measure and plug the biggest funnel leak first.