“We build features. They buy products and do a poor job integrating them,” said the CEO.
Obsessing over a competitor is a terrible way to grow a business.
Knowing when they’re vulnerable is a good way.
When I worked at Atlassian, I got to stand up a fledgling competitive intelligence project. My job was to watch the market and the competition.
There were news feeds and AI tools and good ol’ LinkedIn doom scrolling sessions. All to see what the other companies were doing.
Looking for threats and opportunities. Quarterly earnings seasons are a great time to gather intel.
During one quarterly earnings season, something jumped out at me.
I was sitting at my desk in what was a garage and is now an office, staring out the window at nothing. Listening to the CEO of a competing company answer analyst questions.
Atlassian had recently announced a big acquisition. This CEO was asked something like “what are you going to do about that?”
To which he replied with something like “We build features. They buy products and do a poor job integrating them.”
That messaging continued for weeks. It probably won the other company business. It was a shrewd strike against a competitor in a moment of perceived strength.
It was jiu jitsu. And I loved it.
That one message came about from someone watching the market, seeing an opportunity to counter-message.
Those little opportunities are easy to miss. Especially when we’re watching too closely. A little distance is needed to see trends and weaknesses.
Yes we can scrutinize every little thing, but at microscopic levels it’s easy to miss the obvious, bigger things.
Had that other CEO spent his time dissecting the acquisition, the features, the customer base, and the potential roadmap, he probably would have missed the bigger picture.
His competitor could buy features, but it would be years before it was all integrated and working as well as the same features his teams built in-house.
Watch the market. Keep an eye on competitors. Strike when opportunity shows itself. But don’t obsess over it.
It’s easy to miss the bigger picture and to lose focus on building our own business instead of trying to take theirs down.
Happy hunting,
Peter
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