The Competitor Teardown
For founders who keep losing to a competitor they do not actually understand.
Definition
A competitor teardown is a structured intelligence process that scores a rival across eight dimensions to locate whitespace: the positions they cannot occupy without contradicting their own positioning, which is where your claim belongs.
There is a name that keeps coming up instead of yours. You have a vague sense of why. Vague is why you keep losing.
A structured intelligence process that maps a competitor across eight dimensions, finds the gap they are not covering, and turns that gap into your position. Not admiration, not paranoia. A document you can act on.
What you get
- The eight-dimension competitor scoring map, so impressions become evidence
- The whitespace finder: how to spot positions a competitor structurally cannot take
- The translation step that turns a gap into a claim you can actually publish
- A monitoring cadence, because competitive maps go stale faster than people think
The problem
Why this keeps happening
Most competitive analysis is either dismissive or anxious. Both are useless. Dismissive misses what is actually working for them. Anxious makes you copy it badly.
What you need is structural: where their attention is concentrated, what they systematically ignore, which claims they can defend and which are decoration.
The valuable output is almost never a list of what they do well. It is the whitespace they cannot enter without contradicting their own positioning.
What is The Competitor Teardown?
The Competitor Teardown is a competitor teardown is a structured intelligence process that scores a rival across eight dimensions to locate whitespace: the positions they cannot occupy without contradicting their own positioning, which is where your claim belongs.
An eight-dimension competitor map, a whitespace finder that identifies positions your competitor structurally cannot take, and a translation step that turns that gap into your own claim.
Illustrative diagram. Shape of the argument, not measured data.
How it runs
How does The Competitor Teardown work, step by step?
The Competitor Teardown runs in 5 steps: select, map, find, translate, monitor. Each step is described below with what it produces and why its position in the sequence matters.
- 01
Select
Pick the right competitors. Most people analyse the wrong ones, usually the loudest rather than the closest.
- 02
Map
Score all eight dimensions. The scoring is what converts impressions into evidence.
- 03
Find
Identify whitespace: positions unoccupied because your competitor cannot occupy them.
- 04
Translate
Turn the gap into your positioning claim, in language you can actually publish.
- 05
Monitor
Re-run at a cadence, because a competitive map decays fast.
What is inside
What do you get with The Competitor Teardown?
The Competitor Teardown is delivered as a working skill file plus a written companion covering the method. It contains 4 parts: eight-dimension map, whitespace finder, positioning translation, monitoring cadence.
- Eight-dimension map35%
- Whitespace finder25%
- Positioning translation25%
- Monitoring cadence15%
Failure modes
What do people get wrong?
The 4 most common failures are: analysing the loudest competitor; copying what works for them; confusing activity with strategy; running it once. Each one is explained below with why it happens and what to do instead.
- 01
Analysing the loudest competitor
The one posting most is rarely the one taking your deals. Pick the closest, not the noisiest.
- 02
Copying what works for them
Their strengths are built on their position. Borrowed, those same moves read as imitation.
- 03
Confusing activity with strategy
High output is not a position. Score what they claim and can defend, not what they publish.
- 04
Running it once
A teardown from a year ago describes a company that no longer exists.
There is a name that keeps coming up instead of yours. You have a vague sense of why. Vague is why you keep losing.
Bhavik Sarkhedi · somewhere over Australia
The alternatives
How does The Competitor Teardown compare to the alternatives?
There are three ways to solve this: do it yourself, hire it out, or buy the method. The Competitor Teardown is the third. It costs $25 once, the method stays yours, and you can re-run it without paying again.
| Consideration | Doing it yourself | Hiring it out | This system |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basis for decisions | Impressions | A commissioned report | Scored evidence |
| Cost shape | Your hours | Research firm fees | One payment |
| Speed | Ongoing, never finished | Weeks | An afternoon |
| Finds whitespace | Occasionally, by luck | Sometimes | It is the point |
| Repeatable quarterly | In theory | Costs again | Yes |
Key terms
The vocabulary, defined
- Whitespace
- A position nobody occupies because your competitor structurally cannot take it.
- Dimension
- One scored axis of comparison, so judgement becomes evidence.
- Defensible claim
- Something a competitor can support, as opposed to decoration.
- Monitoring cadence
- How often you re-run the map before it goes stale.
Who is behind it
Built from the actual work
Named to the Forbes 2025 list of top personal branding experts. Published twice in The New York Times. Writing for HuffPost since 2016.
Before you buy
Questions
Is this just a pack of prompts?
No. A prompt is one instruction. This is a working system: the method, the order, the judgement calls, and the standard for what finished work looks like. You are buying the workflow I run inside a paid engagement.
I am an executive, not an operator. Is this too hands-on?
Each one is built so you can either run it yourself or hand it to whoever does this work for you. The value is that the method is decided, so nobody is improvising on your reputation.
Could I not just ask an AI to do this?
You can ask. You will get a generic answer, because the model does not know what good looks like at a senior level and has no opinion about sequence. That judgement is the product.
Do I need to be technical?
No. Installing it is dragging one file into a folder.
What format do I actually receive?
A working skill file you install once, plus a written companion explaining the method so you can adapt it rather than follow it blindly. It runs inside Claude.
What happens after I click buy?
It opens an email to me, already filled in. I reply with a payment link and send the files the same day. Deliberately human, because I want to know who is using these.
Is there a refund?
Yes. If you use it properly and it does not do what this page said, tell me and I refund you. No argument.
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