How AI speeds up my competitive analysis
With 2 free AI tools, you can run deep competitive research in minutes, not hours.
Thank you for reading The Product Courier.
We’re 1,640 here, which is 140 more than last month! 🙏🏻
If you're new here, welcome! I’m Toni.
With Lucas, we are product & marketing experts for startups.
We share actionable tips to help you deliver better work and speed up your career, by leveraging A.I. and other tools.
In this 28th edition, I will share a recent paper that challenges our thoughts about AI models and show you how to leverage free AI tools to run detailed competitive analyses.
But first, let us thank this week’s sponsor:
Scaleway is once again organizing ai-PULSE, its groundbreaking conference designed to further European AI… and the event is already filling up fast!
Why?
👉🏻 Visionary keynotes from the world’s biggest AI thought leaders.
👉🏻 Technical workshops by experts from Kyutai, Poolside, Doctolib, and many more.
👉🏻 A unique focus on three main tracks: Large models, Efficient models, and Open source models
👉🏻 Networking with Europe’s AI crème de la crème!
Visitors can join onsite (places limited), or watch online.
Interested? Click below!
News of the week. 📰
Apple raises questions about AI’s reasoning capabilities
Apple's latest research paper suggests that Large Language Models (LLMs) struggle with real mathematical reasoning.
According to them, even simple math problems can throw off models like GPT-4 when small changes are made.
Benchmarks use standardized tests. One simple change and the results fall drastically, judging by the results of this research.
The models are trained on huge datasets and their apparent thinking is more the result of pattern matching recognition than logical reasoning.
This would be proof that while these models are great with data, they aren't really "thinking" the way humans do.
Why it matters
I help many B2B founders who want to launch AI features.
They often realize that AI is not the best solution because it lacks the reasoning necessary to solve the problem at hand.
When I coach product teams, many believe that AI can replace them or handle all the workload of a product manager.
This research is here to remind us that LLMs are amazing for generating ideas, handling repetitive tasks, and speeding up our workflows.
But they cannot think or make complex judgments like we can (yet, at least).
We need to see AI as a tool that supports our decisions, not one that makes them for us.
I've found that AI is most useful as a sparring partner:
helping me brainstorm,
providing quick answers,
visualizing data trends.
But it’s still up to us to decide what makes sense for our users, to innovate beyond what AI can do, and to add that human touch that turns a good product into a great one.
This paper is a great reminder:
AI can help us be more productive, but the final call is always ours.
Let’s use it wisely.
Community Polls. 📊
Your weekly tutorial. 🧰
How AI speeds up my competitive analysis.
“Competition is always a good thing.
It forces us to do our best.”
Nancy Pearsey
✅ Competitive analysis is key for understanding your market & building products.
✅ It is time-consuming, particularly when you tackle a new industry.
✅ Get an actionable AI flow to run a detailed competitive analysis in minutes.
Why competitive analysis is key. 🔑
Competitive analysis is an essential part of product discovery.
It helps us understand where our product stands in the market, identify opportunities for improvement, and stay ahead of the competitors.
By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of other companies, we can make more informed decisions that align with customers' needs.
What competitive analysis is good for:
👉🏻 Identify gaps in the market:
By analyzing competitors, you can find gaps in their offerings and use those insights to improve your product and your marketing strategy.
👉🏻 Understand customer expectations:
Seeing what features or services competitors offer helps you understand what your target customers may expect.
👉🏻 Improve your unique selling proposition (USP):
It can help you define what makes your product unique compared to others in the market.
What competitive analysis shouldn't be:
❌ A copycat strategy: The goal is not to copy competitors but to understand the landscape and offer something different or better.
❌ The only source of information: While it's important, relying solely on competitor information can make you lose focus on your unique vision or customer needs.
❌ A one-time effort: Markets change rapidly, so competitive analysis should be an ongoing process to stay updated.
How to run a Competitive Analysis in minutes 📊
While competitive analysis is key gathering all the information can be daunting.
We already shared how you can scrape competitors’ websites easily to gather information.
But when you attack a new market or start with a new company you might not really know who your competition is and you don’t have detailed information on the market.
Traditional methods often involve hours of manual research to identify competitors, analyze their offers, and compile insights to compare them.
Now, you can streamline this entire process with AI, reducing the time it takes and increasing the depth of insights you get.
Today I will show you a simple workflow that will help you:
identify a list of competitors in minutes,
analyze them based on specific criteria,
run a SWOT analysis
and even get a podcast to tell you about the results.
🎁 you can use the tools in the workflow for free
So, let’s cut to the chase and see this workflow in action.
Note: We’ll use Scaleway as an example for the tutorial.