Prompt 05 — Competitive intelligence

A competition slide with two obvious names says you have not looked. A competition slide with no losses says nobody should believe it.

Requires: 02-customer and 04-product past tbd.

Read AGENTS.md first, then stack/CONTEXT.md, stack/02-customer/customer.md,
stack/03-market/market.md and stack/04-product/product.md. Also read any
competitive material in _inbox/.

## Step 0 — Check the ground

Open stack/02-customer/customer.md and stack/04-product/product.md. You cannot
say who a company competes with until you can say who it serves and what it
does — every competitor is a competitor *for a particular buyer's particular
job*, and without that the grid is a list of companies in the same industry.

If either is still [TBD], name it, say which prompt fills it —
03-customer-and-problem.md, 06-product-and-roadmap.md — and stop.

## Step 1 — Audit the current view

- How many competitors are currently listed?
- How many have a real, observed price attached?
- Has the founder actually used any of these products?
- Is "doing nothing" listed as a competitor?
- Does the current analysis show anywhere the company loses?

If the answer to the last is no, say so. An analysis in which the company wins
every column is not analysis.

## Step 2 — The four missing categories

For each, identify who it is for THIS company. If genuinely none exists, say so
and explain why — do not leave it blank.

1. THE INCUMBENT DOING IT BADLY
   Often a large, government or heavily subsidised provider with a genuinely
   worse product, given away free or near-free. Free-and-bad beats good-and-paid
   more often than founders expect. You cannot out-price free. Who is it, and
   what would make a customer pay anyway?

2. THE ADJACENT PLATFORM
   The bigger player one step away who could add this in a quarter, to an
   audience they already have. Especially acute in software, where large AI
   ecosystems now absorb narrow use cases quickly. Ask directly: could this
   entire product be a feature inside something the customer already uses? If
   yes, say so plainly — it is the most important thing on this page.

3. THE INFORMAL ALTERNATIVE
   The local operator, the WhatsApp group, the cousin, the spreadsheet, the
   guy everyone already calls. Usually the actual competitor, almost never on
   the slide.

4. THE NEW ENTRANT
   Well-funded, launched recently, spending heavily on marketing while
   delivering badly. They may not last but they will distort the market and the
   price for a year, and they will take your customers meanwhile.

Plus: DOING NOTHING. Always a row. Price ₹0, familiar, zero risk.

## Step 3 — The grid

| Competitor | Type | Who they serve | Price | Why customers pick them | Why customers leave | Where we win | Where we lose |

Rules:
- Only observed prices. Mark the source: their site, a quote you requested, a
  customer, a shelf. A price you assumed is worse than a blank.
- "Why customers pick them" must be written generously. If you cannot make a
  genuine case for choosing them, the market is not understood — and the reason
  you did not write down is the reason you will lose.
- Every row must have something in "where we lose."

## Step 4 — Where we actually lose

Not "we lose on brand awareness." Name the specific customer, in the specific
situation, who should correctly choose a competitor — and what would have to
change for that to flip.

Then: which competitor should the founder be most worried about in 24 months,
and why? Usually not the one they are watching.

## Step 5 — Defensibility, honestly

Go through: IP, proprietary data, distribution, community and brand, cost
structure, regulatory know-how, timing, switching costs.

For each, does this company genuinely have it TODAY — not aspire to it? Most
early companies have none, and saying "none yet, here is what we are building
toward" is stronger than claiming five.

On patents specifically: they do not stop a well-resourced competitor copying
you; they give you standing to act, and credibility in some sectors and with
some grant committees. Filing costs real money that could go to customers.
Report what is genuinely worth protecting and what the trade-off looks like at
this stage. It is a judgement, not a default.

## Step 6 — What to do about it

- What should the founder do THIS MONTH about the competitive position?
- What should they buy, try, or visit? Ordering a competitor's product and
  using it is an afternoon and a small amount of money, and it routinely
  reveals that the well-marketed rival has terrible fulfilment — which is the
  gap to attack.
- What should be monitored, how often, and by whom?

## Output

Update stack/03-market/market.md competition section. For any competitor worth
watching closely, create a file from worksheets/competitor-profile.md.

Update front matter and the INDEX row.

Finish with: the one competitor this founder is underestimating, and why.

Notes

The adjacent platform question is the one to sit with. If your product could be a feature inside something your customers already use, you need either a reason that will not happen or a plan for when it does. This is not pessimism — it is the specific reason experienced advisors now steer some founders away from thin software plays and toward businesses with physical, regulatory or relationship moats.

Buy the competitor's product. Order it, use it, contact their support. It is the highest-information-per-rupee research available and almost nobody does it.