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Competitor · Diagnose

Competitor profiling

A structured read of who you are actually up against, how they make money, and what they are likely to do next. Broader and shallower than a teardown, and the right starting point when the field is unclear.

The printable canvas and the handoff into Claude Code are part of a paid plan. See what a plan includes. It needs the Claude desktop app on this machine, and your team and the prompt library already installed in that project — we cannot see your disk, so open it there.

Stage
01 Diagnose
Works at
Business
Maturity
Early startup → Large organisation
Time
A day for a set of five or six

What it is

A comparable, structured description of each significant competitor, built from public evidence. Its purpose is breadth — establishing the shape of the field and who genuinely threatens you — before committing time to a deep read of any one of them.

Identity and scale
Ownership, size, funding, geography, trajectory. Whether they are growing, holding or quietly shrinking.
Business model
How the money is actually made: what is charged for, where margin sits, what is subsidised to win something else.
Proposition and positioning
What they say they are for, who they aim at, and what they consistently lead with.
Cost position
Their likely cost structure relative to yours, and what drives it — scale, sourcing, automation, labour model.
Recent moves and signals
Launches, hires, acquisitions, price changes, retrenchments. Direction of travel over the last twelve months.
Threat assessment
What they would have to do to hurt you, whether they can, and whether anything suggests they intend to.
The mistake people makeThe competitor set is almost always drawn too narrowly. The most damaging competitor is frequently not in your category at all — it is a substitute, an in-house alternative, or the customer deciding the problem is not worth solving.
What it’s forYou need a structured read on who you are up against and how they make money.
What it’s not forYour real threat is a substitute or a shift in customer behaviour, not a named rival.

How you run it

  1. Define the set before you profileInclude substitutes and the customer's option of doing nothing. A set drawn only from your own category will miss whoever is actually taking your revenue.
  2. Use the same headings for everyoneComparable profiles or no comparison. Ownership, scale, model, proposition, pricing, cost position, recent moves.
  3. Find the economics, not the marketingHow do they actually make money — where is the margin, what is subsidised, what are they buying share with?
  4. Read the direction, not just the positionRecent hires, recent launches, recent funding. A competitor's trajectory is more useful than its current state.
  5. Rank by threat, then go deeper on oneProfiling tells you who matters; a teardown tells you what to do about them. Do not stop at the profiles.

The prompt

Two ways to run it

Run this tool in your own Claude

The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.

🔒 Prompt locked

Everything above is free — what this tool is, what it is for, what it is not for, and how to run it as a workshop. Three tool prompts a month are free with an account; beyond three, and for the printable canvas, it is the paid part.

See plans — from £19 a month

Your playbook

It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.

You’ll need

  • A defensible definition of who counts as a competitor
  • Public sources: filings, sites, pricing, job ads
  • Whatever your sales team hears in the field

You’ll end up with

  • A comparable profile for each competitor
  • Where each is strong, exposed, and likely to move
  • The one or two worth a full teardown

Runs well with

AI risk classification and governanceAnalysis planBusiness Model CanvasCapability maturity assessment