A structured, repeatable teardown of your three closest competitors — what they're genuinely good at, what they claim, and where that leaves room for you to specialize rather than compete head-on.
Fair warning: done honestly, this exercise is meant to be a little humbling.
Pick your three closest competitors — the ones a buyer would actually compare you to, not the ones you wish you were competing with. Run the identical six-section teardown on each, then use the closing synthesis to find your wedge.
Sections A–C are fact-finding: annual reports, FDA/CE databases, published trials, their own website and sales collateral. Get the facts down before you interpret them.
Section C is their marketing voice. Section D is where you go looking for the gap between what they say and what the evidence actually shows.
The gut-check questions are designed to surface uncomfortable answers. Do this section with a cofounder, advisor, or someone outside the building — it's too easy to talk yourself out of the hard answers solo.
The instinct will be to minimize a competitor's strengths. Resist it. An honest list of where you lose today is what makes the synthesis at the end actually useful.
Snapshot data — pull this from public filings, FDA/CE databases, their site, LinkedIn, and press coverage.
Set marketing language aside for now — this is your honest technical and commercial read of their real strengths.
This is their voice, not yours — pull language straight from their website, sales decks, and published claims.
Go looking for the gap. Forums, app store reviews, conference hallway conversations, peer-reviewed rebuttals, FDA MAUDE reports, and user complaints all live here.
Answer these with someone outside the building. Resist the instinct to talk yourself out of the hard answers.
If a hospital's current process works “well enough” with this competitor, why would they tear it out for us?
What do they have — capital, relationships, data, regulatory history, install base — that we cannot realistically replicate in the next 24 months?
If we only match them feature-for-feature, why would anyone actually switch?
What is the one thing this competitor cannot or will not do — because of their size, business model, or incentives — that we could?
Where are they clearly, honestly better than us today? Write it down. Don't rationalize it away.
Given everything above, what narrow wedge or use case could we own that this competitor is structurally unlikely to defend?
Snapshot data — pull this from public filings, FDA/CE databases, their site, LinkedIn, and press coverage.
Set marketing language aside for now — this is your honest technical and commercial read of their real strengths.
This is their voice, not yours — pull language straight from their website, sales decks, and published claims.
Go looking for the gap. Forums, app store reviews, conference hallway conversations, peer-reviewed rebuttals, FDA MAUDE reports, and user complaints all live here.
Answer these with someone outside the building. Resist the instinct to talk yourself out of the hard answers.
If a hospital's current process works “well enough” with this competitor, why would they tear it out for us?
What do they have — capital, relationships, data, regulatory history, install base — that we cannot realistically replicate in the next 24 months?
If we only match them feature-for-feature, why would anyone actually switch?
What is the one thing this competitor cannot or will not do — because of their size, business model, or incentives — that we could?
Where are they clearly, honestly better than us today? Write it down. Don't rationalize it away.
Given everything above, what narrow wedge or use case could we own that this competitor is structurally unlikely to defend?
Snapshot data — pull this from public filings, FDA/CE databases, their site, LinkedIn, and press coverage.
Set marketing language aside for now — this is your honest technical and commercial read of their real strengths.
This is their voice, not yours — pull language straight from their website, sales decks, and published claims.
Go looking for the gap. Forums, app store reviews, conference hallway conversations, peer-reviewed rebuttals, FDA MAUDE reports, and user complaints all live here.
Answer these with someone outside the building. Resist the instinct to talk yourself out of the hard answers.
If a hospital's current process works “well enough” with this competitor, why would they tear it out for us?
What do they have — capital, relationships, data, regulatory history, install base — that we cannot realistically replicate in the next 24 months?
If we only match them feature-for-feature, why would anyone actually switch?
What is the one thing this competitor cannot or will not do — because of their size, business model, or incentives — that we could?
Where are they clearly, honestly better than us today? Write it down. Don't rationalize it away.
Given everything above, what narrow wedge or use case could we own that this competitor is structurally unlikely to defend?
Pull the key findings from each teardown into one view. The pattern across all three tells you more than any single competitor does.
| Competitor | Their moat | Their blind spot | Our wedge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Competitor 01 | |||
| Competitor 02 | |||
| Competitor 03 |
Three questions. Answer them honestly before you finalize a go-to-market plan.
Are we trying to be a smaller version of them — or something genuinely different?
If we launched tomorrow, what's the honest reason a customer would choose us over any of these three?
What would have to be true — about our product, our evidence, our team, or our timing — for us to actually win real share within three years?