

Death By Competitive Analysis - nathanh
http://steveblank.com/2010/03/01/death-by-analysis/

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Hexstream
"But customers don’t buy features, they usually buy something that solves a
real or perceived need. That’s the comparison you and your investors should be
looking at - what do customers say they need or want?"

What customers say they need or want != What customers need or want.

At least not necessarily. For instance, they might say they want "something
like X already offers but better" when they'd prefer something that's quite
unlike X (and much more better).

~~~
pedalpete
you're absolutely right, and that is the real problem I see with much of what
Steve Blank professes.Particularly when talking about under-developed markets.

However, in this instance re:competitive analysis, I agree with Steve. If
competitive analysis is focusing on a feature for feature comparison, I can
understand why that doesn't jive.

It is the entrepreneurs job to interpret hearing what the customers want into
something that they didn't know they want, but must have.

~~~
landyman
Agreed. Your customers may not know what they want, but the feature comparison
chart doesn't solve that for them. Having your new product be a huge feature
superset of all of your competitors doesn't get you anything. It may give your
product all of those features, but it will probably give your product all
those weaknesses too plus an extra complexity that most customers won't want.

