Customers & Research

How do I do competitive research for a brand-new category where there are no direct competitors yet?

A starting point

No direct competitors almost never means no competition, it means you're competing against how people solve the problem today, however clumsily. Map the workarounds, the adjacent tools people stretch to fit, and the budget line the money currently comes out of, because that's who you're really taking share from. Be honest with yourself: a genuinely empty category can mean you're early, or it can mean nobody wants this, and only customer conversations tell you which.

Go deeper

Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time.

3 resources 3 link-checked Watch Read

Watch

▶️ Video
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Why we picked it This is the canonical newcomer walkthrough: Christensen shows a team improving a milkshake on every obvious dimension and moving nothing, because they had the job wrong. It makes the good-versus-bad framing concrete in a few minutes, which is exactly the trap founders fall into when they optimize a feature instead of the job. Start here if the concept still feels abstract.

Clay Christensen: The Jobs to be Done Theory (the milkshake example)

On YouTube by Clayton Christensen (HubSpot Marketing) ~5 min

Clay Christensen: The Jobs to be Done Theory (the milkshake example)
  • Improving a product on the wrong dimensions is what a bad job statement looks like in practice.
  • The same product can be hired for very different jobs (the morning commute versus the afternoon treat), so the situation defines the job.
  • Watch what people hire and fire, not just what they say they want, to name the job correctly.
Watch on YouTube youtube.com →

Read

📖 Book
✓ Link checked Paid Intermediate

Why we picked it When you are defining a category instead of entering one, the usual competitor grid does not exist yet, so this book reframes the job as designing the category itself. It is the clearest, most-cited playbook for thinking about positioning, demand, and who the real competition actually is (the old way of doing things) when there are no direct rivals. Read it as a starting point for how to frame the space, not as a promise that the category king seat is yours.

Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets

From Goodreads by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, Kevin Maney 272 pages

  • Your first competition in an empty category is the status quo and a problem people cannot yet name, not another startup.
  • Being different (defining a new game) beats being better inside someone else's game.
  • Category design is deliberate work: you condition how customers think about the problem before you can win the demand.
Open goodreads.com →
✍️ Essay
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Why we picked it An empty competitor field feels like a moat, but this piece is honest that it often means the market has not proven it will pay yet. It pushes you past the comforting story (we have no competitors) toward the harder work of confirming that real demand exists. Treat it as a gut check before you fall in love with an empty category, not the final verdict on your specific idea.

Why a lack of competition may be the worst thing for new startups

From Escalon by Escalon Services About a 6 minute read

  • No visible competitors can signal no market, so read the emptiness as a question to answer, not a win to celebrate.
  • Existing rivals are proof that people will pay for a solution to the problem; their absence removes that proof.
  • The honest move is to validate demand directly (will people switch from what they do today) before you build.
Open escalon.services →

People also ask

How do I research my competitors properly? Go beyond their homepage: sign up, read their reviews, their churned-customer complaints, their job posts, and their pricing page. The gold is in w... Beginner 2 resources → What if my customers say they have no competitors, is that good or bad? Almost always bad, because it usually means the job isn't painful enough to spend money or effort on. If nobody's built anything, ask what people c... Beginner 2 resources → What tools should I use to track competitors and market landscape? Start free and manual before you pay for anything: Google Alerts and their newsletter for moves, G2/Capterra reviews for weaknesses, Crunchbase for... Intermediate 2 resources → How do I position against a bigger, better-funded competitor? Don't fight them on their strengths, reframe the category so your strengths matter most. Anchor on the competitive alternatives your best customers... Advanced 2 resources → How do I size the market and figure out if it's big enough? Build it bottom-up, not from a scary McKinsey top-down number: who exactly is the customer, how many are there, what will they pay, and how will yo... Intermediate 2 resources → How do I understand the competitive landscape for an Indian market specifically? Don't assume the US playbook maps onto India, pricing power, distribution, and willingness-to-pay are wildly different. Study who Indian customers ... Intermediate 2 resources →