A Series of Charts to Help Founders Understand the Competitive Landscape
A lot more people are building in your space than you think.
Attached in this article are various different charts of the state of various competitive industries that exist across Startupland. Note: I have no idea where a lot of these came from (though I believe the source for many of them are in the picture) because many of these I got by scrolling through Twitter but if anyone has the sources for the others, please let me know so I can give proper credit.
One of the things we’ve noticed throughout our investing journey so far is that many founders tend to imagine their startup journey in a “vacuum”- which means that they build a lot of “innovation” without truly being aware about the landscape they are operating in. Sure- most of them will spit out big names in the industry and create a chart with those in mind. But one of the biggest threats to a founder’s future success are the projects that they aren’t as aware of- in other words, pre-seed startups competing with other pre-seed/seed startups that aren’t even aware of their existence!
Now granted, it’s difficult for everyone to be aware of everyone. SEO is so competitive and challenging nowadays that it’d probably take the most dedicated of Googlers/AutoGPT tools to really dig up everything that everyone is working on. But I challenge all pre-seed and earlier founders reading this article to anticipate and be aware of founders they aren’t aware of and to put their project into perspective. That doesn’t mean “never work on things if there are no competitors.” There are always and will always be competitors. But keeping the below quadrants inside your awareness will enable you to find product market fit faster as you attempt to hunt for the intersection between what you and your team are good at, what customers really need, and your ability to provide for what a target custom needs.
Now, onto some cool charts! Let me know if you have any thoughts.