## Your Startup vs Competition

So you've done a competitive analysis and found your competitors.

The good news, thriving competitors means there is indeed a market for your product!  Congrats on having a startup idea with proven Product Market Fit! 🥳

The bad news, your competitors are already in the market, they have a head start on you. 😱

This can be dismaying, but there is more good news:
1. You discovered this now and not later
2. It's now up to YOU how to proceed and how to compete

## Two Questions

There are two questions you now need to answer:

1. WHO is your market going to be best-in-market for?  (please don't say everybody)
2. WHAT will make your product best-in-market for that audience?  Another way to think of it, what would make a product best for this audience, that might not matter (or even make it worse) for a difference audience?

## Axis of Competition

Here are some different approaches you could take.  Which one makes the most sense for you, your product, and your market: that's up to you.  You got this.

* Different Aesthetics
 * Be the option for artist.  Be the option for engineers.  For indiehackers.  For Pilates Coaches.

* Price Points
 * Offer the same product for cheaper (here there be dragons!)
 * Be the VIP version of your competitor.  Be the economic version.
 * Offer a BETTER product at the same price, or at a better price-value-ratio

* Compete on UX.  Be the easiest for your customers to onboard.

* Focus on one Killer Feature
* Be a more complete solution to the problem customers are trying to solve.
* Address Unmet Customer Needs
* Be the EASY option.  Make it easiest / fastest for your customers to onboard and get done what they need.
* Be the POWER user option.  Your users know what they're doing and have complete control.


## Other Approaches

* Be more agile
 * Be able to address your customers needs even if it doesn't fit the current shape of your product offering
 * Be the first to apply and integrate new technologies (the internet, AI, whatever comes next)
 * Be the first in a new market, or to use new sales channels and social media

* Have better values.
 * What causes do your users care about?  What causes do YOU care about?  How can your product be a knwon brand in that space?

* More personalized Customer Experience
 * Humans love humans
 * https://youtu.be/CqI4UzxUuyo?si=qga0Otgl9bifjCEn&t=28

* Everyone loves an underdog, embrace it!
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYWwfdb2A88


## Work in Progress

This post is VERY much a work in progress.  If you have other approaches you think can help other indie founders deal with competitors, let me know!

If you're still befuddled and want to talk about what are the best options for YOUR startup, [please reach out on Twitter](https://twitter.com/scottplusplus)


Vs Competition



Talking to your future users is a CRITICAL step in discovering, evaluating, and validadting startup ideas.

Here are some tips to get the most from these discussions.

## Key Tips

1. Ask more specific questions than "do you like it" or "what do you think"
2. Ask qualitative questions, rather than binary questions.

Here's two of my favorites:

How excited would you be to recommend this product to someone, on a scale from 1-10.
How much would you be happy to pay for this today?

And of course follow up both of these with WHY or further conversation.

## Better Questions than “Do you like it?”

Here are some more questions a popular LLM thought might be helpful.

### General Questions

What keeps you from being excited to share this product from others in your network?

### Understanding Problems

Can you tell me about a recent experience where you face [problem your startup solves]

How frequently do you encounter this problem?

What impact does this problem have on your daily life or work?

Have you tried solving this problem before? If so, how?

### Evaluating Solutions

Based on what you’ve heard, how would you describe our solution in your own words?

What features do you think are essential in a solution for this problem?

What concerns do you have about this solution?

What do you think distinguishes our solution from alternatives on the market?

### Market and Competition

Are you currently using any similar products or services? What do you like or dislike about them?

How much are you currently paying for similar solutions?

What do you think is lacking in existing solutions on the market?

Is there anything specific that you wish existing solutions offered, but they don’t?

### Pricing and Value

How much would you be willing to pay for a solution like this? Why?

What specific features or benefits would justify the price for you?

Would you prefer a one-time purchase, or a subscription model? Why?

Can you think of any additional value we could provide that would make this product / service more attractive to you?

### Feedback and Improvement

What would get you to recommend this solution to others?

Are there any concerns that, if addressed, would make you more likely to use our product / service?

Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve our solution to better meet your needs?

### The Decision-Making Process

Who else do you consult with when making decisions about purchasing products / services like this?

What factors influence your decision to try a new product / service?

Is there a specific situation where you’re more likely to consider trying a new solution like this?


User Interview Questions



My guide to an epic 🤘 Product Hunt launch. What worked and what I should have done differently.

Six months ago, I set out to build something to help indie hackers validate their startup ideas BEFORE they build by understanding the market and their competitors from day zero.

Since then, I've learned SO MUCH from everyone in the #indiehacker and #buildinpublic and have been incredibly moved by how supportive this community is. Six weeks ago, I even resigned from Megatech and flew to Bali to do this full-time.

Last week I finally went through the [Product Hunt right of passage](https://www.producthunt.com/products/validate-my-saas#validate-my-saas). Validate My Saas spent the full 24hrs dancing between 10th and 11th place before finally ending tied for 8/9th place.

Here's how I did it:
- Have an amazing community
- Have a pretty good product
- git sick --hard for days before the launch and miss critical prep time
- Have Product Hunt block your launch from the homepage for the first 7 hours
- Contact support to be finally added to the homepage
- Pass out for a few hours
- Break into the top 10. Hurray!
- But now back to 11, oh no! Keep hustling for every vote until the day is won, and you end up tied for 8/9th place!!
- Victory Dance ┏(･o･)┛ ♪ ┗ (･o･) ┓

## Lesson 1:

This is my most important takeaway: **Tweets and retweets don't go as far as you think, DMs are your friend.**

I thought I did a great job promoting the launch on Twitter. Despite my meager 1,200 followers, I was blessed with a lot of support and had [my main tweet](https://x.com/ScottPlusPlus/status/1790276418808750284) spread by several larger accounts with a combined reach of ~30k, and currently have 10k views on the tweet.

However, **that did NOT lead to many Product Hunt upvotes**.

After so many retweets, and posting multiple times about the launch throughout the 24 hrs, I honestly felt like everyone in the community must be sick of hearing about it. 

But guess what: **there were STILL people who had no idea, but were happy to support me when I DM'd them**. I should have been DMing more folk much earlier than I did.

## Lesson 2:

Check that your product is featured right away!

Around 6 hours into the launch, people started messaging me that ValidateMySaas wasn't on the Product Hunt homepage! 

I didn't even realize that was a thing that could happen, but sure enough. This whole time, for the most critical hours at the beginning of the launch, we weren't receiving ANY organic traffic from Product Hunt. (unless someone navigated to "all", but who does that?)

After reaching out to PH support and waiting a few more hours, we were finally added to the homepage. If I had thought to double-check this immediately we might could have been featured much earlier in the day, which has compounding effects.

## What Worked:

2 weeks up to the launch, my [pinned post on X](https://x.com/ScottPlusPlus/status/1786720994000044124) linked to the trailer and invited people to "like this post and I'll dm you a reminder day of". 

This built my initial list of 40 people to DM about the launch. Having people opt-in to these prevented any feeling of unease sending the DMs, and once I hit the end of the list I was comfortable enough with the process to continue DM-ing people that hadn't asked. (though, as mentioned, I should have done even more of that)

## What Went ¯\\\_(¬\_¬)\_/¯

I spent a LOT of time the day before the launch creating reports (ie custom samples of my product) for indiehackers with ~10k-20k followers. 

I thought giving these when I DM'd them would make it easier for them to upvote and share. In the end a few of them were kind enough to upvote the Launch, but none of them went on to share with their audiences. Probably they were just being nice and would have upvoted without the sample. Either way, for the time I spent on them **I could have sent out 10x DMs to less busy people and had better results**.

For a week+ before the launch I was fairly active on Product Hunt. Upvoting projects, commenting, and even sharing the launches on Twitter. Maybe this is just table-stakes, but I didn't notice a high ROI from these activities.

## Conclusion

The Product Hunt went well for us.  Through the launch and the promotion around it, 25 people used Validate My Saas to validate their startup ideas.

Thank you so much to the #indiehacker and #buildinpublic community 🙏.

What **really** worked for me was this:  Spend 6+ months active in a community of your target audience, giving value without worrying about what comes back. Then build a product that the type of people who like Product Hunt will also like.  And of course a great way to do that is by looking for successful competitors 😅. 

If you'd like any other support or advice, don't hesitate to [reach out](http://www.twitter.com/scottplusplus).


Product Hunt Retro



_Action Items to explore a target audience to find pain points and opportunities to provide value. The starting point for a great startup idea._

By now, we all know the advice: to build a successful startup, solve someone's problems.  Don't build something and then try to find someone it could help, rather start with a problem in the market and then build a solution for it.

That's great advice but still leaves open: **HOW** do you find or identify pain points in the market to solve?  Of course you can "keep your ears to the ground" and hope to stumble on one of these problems, but if you want to hunt these problems more actively, what can you do?

Here are **6 concrete action items** you can take to accelerate your hunt for a problem to solve.

## Narrow Your Focus

First, it helps to narrow your focus to a specific audience. Whose problems do you want to be solving?  Who do you want to be your future customers?  You can of course run these action items for multiple audiences. If you haven't identified your audience yet, here's [one of my favorite videos on the topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnWo6ex1C4E)

## Find What's Already Written

People do like to complain.  They post about pain points both to vent, and to get help finding solutions.  Quora, Reddit, Twitter are all great places to explore to find these types of posts.

There are also some great tools that can automate the work of loking through endless posts to to find relevant info.  [Indiepulse](https://www.indiepulse.co) and [GummySearch](https://gummysearch.com/) amongst them.

## Run a Poll

Whether on Twitter or Facebook Groups, these can be an underestimated source of insight. Brainstorm a few pain points you already know about, and let the crowd confirm or expand on it. For example:

> What's the hardest part about marketing as an indiedev?
> * coming up with a marketing strategy
> * no budget to run ads
> * consistently coming up with content ideas
> * something else (comment below!)

If you don’t have enough reach on Twitter yet? you can spend like $20 to boost the reach of your poll.  This is not going to drop a brilliant startup idea into your lap, but it WILL help identify different directions to explore, and perhaps create some warm leads for deeper conversations.

## Lead a Workshop

I went to a Startup meetup in Bali and met a pair of founders using this tactic:

They knew they wanted to bring some value to the Real Estate industry. But what are the opportunities there?  So they set up a few free workshops: "Using AI To Boost Your Real Estate Business".  Here they simply coached real estate agents about the various AI tools already in the market (sometimes as developers we forget most people are not as familiar with the latest tech as we are).

They set themselves up as experts on the tech side, and the Real Estate small businesses that came to the workshops naturally brought their questions and painpoints!

## Cold Outreach and User Interviews

Do NOT underestimate cold outreach.  If you haven't read [The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick](https://www.momtestbook.com/), do it now!  It's one of those books I wish I read sooner on my indie hacker journey (even _after_ having consumed an unhealthy amount of youtube videos, tweets, and articles about indie hacking)

Here are some quick insights from Chapter 6:

When you are just exploring the space hunting for a problem, your reply rate is irrelevant. Even if you only get one response, you got a response! So do the work and send out 100 cold emails!

Here's a template for a message you can send:

> Hey Scott (that's me, but change the name appropriately)
> 
> I 'm bootstrapping a startup trying to make marketing easier for indiehackers. We're having some trouble identifying which are the MOST critical pain points in this area for indiehackers. You've been posting a lot of great stuff on Twitter (oh thanks, that's nice of you to say!) and I think you could really help point us in the right direction.
> 
> Can you spare 15 minutes sometime next week for a quick chat?

For more details on WHY this is a good template, seriously go read the book.

## Competitors

Another great way to find which problems your audience is _ALREADY_ paying to solve, is to look for existing competitors in the market. A simple approach would be to ask ChatGPT, or go the more powerful route of something like Validate My Saas (thanks for being here :P )

Once you have identified the most successful products serving your target audience, you can look through [Trust Pilot](https://www.trustpilot.com/), [G2](https://www.g2.com/) or other sources of reviews to see what the market doesn't like about these solutions.  Or of course you can let Validate My Saas do that for you 😉

## Conclusion

There you have it, 6 direct actions you can take to better understand the needs of the market you're looking to serve.  If these were helpful, you have suggestions for a 7th, or just want some feedback from a fellow founder about your startup, [don't be shy](https://x.com/ScottPlusPlus).

Happy hunting 🤘


Vs Competition

Vs Competition

How to Get Great Feedback About Your Startup Idea

Product Hunt Retro

How to Hunt a Problem

Top 5 Business Plan Generator/Tools (Tried and Compared)

How to Use ChatGPT Deep Research Function for Market Research

10 Step Business Startup Checklist For Bootstrapped Founders

The 6 Best Audience Analysis Tools for Your Business (Tried and Compared)

5 Best Competitor Analysis Tools For Your Business

The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Best Tech Stack for Your Startup in 2025

How to Differentiate Your SaaS in 2025: 4 Proven Plays for Fast Growth

How Top Founders Do SaaS Market Research (2025)