

Ask HN: How do you research your competition? - slindstr

Knowing your competition is a very important part of business and I'm curious to get your input as to how you figure out who your direct and indirect competition is.<p>I recently needed to do a specific task and while there were a couple of solutions out there, I really disliked their implementations (basically they were too difficult to use).  I think I can do a much better job in implementing the idea (which I am working on now), but I'd really like to have a better picture of who's out there doing the same thing.<p>Do you have any suggestions for finding potential competitors aside from just mindlessly Googling words and phrases?<p>Thanks in advance!
======
olalonde
I usually gather information through those sites/techniques:

\- <http://www.crunchbase.com>

\- Google search "COMPANY alternative"

\- Twitter search "COMPANY"

* Where COMPANY is either the company/product name.

~~~
slindstr
Thanks for the insight! I'm already using Google and Twitter in that way and
Crunchbase seems pretty sweet but after doing a couple of searches and
clicking some companies it looks like there's a lot of entries for tiny/small
companies that don't exist anymore :(

------
photon_off
If they have a URL an are somewhat popular, I use my website:
<http://www.moreofit.com> to find similar services and companies. By noting
the tags you can gain tremendous insight into the breadth and depth of the
market space. By altering the sort popularity, you can quickly note who's
doing well.

~~~
slindstr
Wow that's a really cool site! How long did it take you to make? Are you
making money off of it yet?

------
cperciva
_how you figure out who your direct and indirect competition is_

I talk to my customers. They're very good at telling me "I was using X until I
discovered Tarsnap" and (far less often) "I'm not going to be using Tarsnap
any more because I'm switching to X".

~~~
slindstr
That's a great point and I think if you're making a new implementation of a
product like I am and you have a general idea of who your customer could
potentially be just asking them could be very helpful, though it may be
difficult to get a response. It's funny how this is probably one of the
simplest and most obvious ways, and yet it completely eluded me until I read
your post. Thanks!

------
slindstr
I just found this blog posting that has a list of tools that you can use to
analyze your competitors when you find them:

<http://www.seomoz.org/blog/monitor-competitor-traffic>

------
mattgratt
One trick I found for researching competitors (once you know they're
competitors): \- Do a linkedin search for the competitive company \- Pull the
names of the CTO and senior technical staff \- Do a patent search based on
those names

------
FindSimilar
Try <http://www.similarsitesearch.com/>

------
AllanRwaka
Work for them :)

~~~
slindstr
You gotta be able to find 'fm to work for 'em :)

