Essay · About a 3 minute read

Customer Obsessed and Competitor Aware

David Cummings · David Cummings on Startups Free Beginner

This short post names the exact trap behind competitor anxiety: studying rivals feels like work but takes almost no effort, while the work that actually moves your product (talking to customers) is much harder, so the easy thing crowds out the important thing. Cummings gives one concrete rule to break the spiral: whenever a competitor announcement is pulling at you, email three customers to book check-ins instead. It is the discipline that keeps competitor monitoring healthy rather than compulsive.

• Reading competitor sites is easy and feels productive, which is exactly why it quietly displaces the harder, higher-value work of talking to customers.
• The fix is a swap, not willpower: redirect the urge to check a rival into a concrete customer action, like booking three check-ins.
• Aim for customer obsessed and competitor aware, not the other way around.