| name | market-scan |
| description | Refresh the founder's competitive and market context. Re-scan named rivals and the category for what changed since the brief was written (rebrands, repositioning, new entrants, pricing shifts, renamed categories) and update docs/gtm-cofounder/founder-brief.md and the roadmap with anything that moves positioning. Use on a cadence, or whenever a competitor rebrands, a new tool appears, or the founder senses the market has shifted under them. |
Market scan (keep your read current)
Positioning rots. The competitor you sized up six months ago has since rebranded, raised, repriced, or renamed the category. This is the habit that keeps your brief honest about the world outside it.
Use this when: a rival just rebranded or repositioned, a new tool is getting attention in your space, your docs/gtm-cofounder/founder-brief.md competitor answers are more than a quarter old, or you just have the feeling the ground moved and your messaging is answering last year's market.
The core idea
Your docs/gtm-cofounder/founder-brief.md captured the market as it was the day you wrote it. Markets don't hold still. A scan re-checks the outside world against your brief and surfaces the deltas: what changed, and which changes actually threaten or help your positioning. Most don't matter. The scan's job is to find the two or three that do, not to produce a competitor spreadsheet.
Before you start: can your agent see the web?
- If your agent can browse or search the web, it runs the scan for real: competitor homepages, changelogs, pricing pages, launch posts, and recent discussion.
- If it can't, it runs the scan as an interview: it asks what you've noticed and where, and you paste in the pages. Same output, you're the browser. Say which mode you're in up front.
How to run this (for the agent)
- Start from the brief. Read
docs/gtm-cofounder/founder-brief.md: the rivals ("what do they use instead"), the "why you", the villain, and the current positioning line. That's your baseline to compare against.
- Scan the named rivals first, then the category. For each competitor in the brief, check: homepage headline and positioning, pricing, any rebrand or renamed category, funding or acquisition, and new capabilities that erase the founder's wedge. Then scan for new entrants and category-level shifts (a term everyone suddenly uses, a platform move, an AI or agent shift).
- Report deltas, not descriptions. Do not summarize each competitor. Say what changed since the brief, and for each change, whether it strengthens, threatens, or is irrelevant to the founder's positioning. Rank by "does this move our position."
- Tie every real change to an action. A rival adopting the founder's language means the wedge is eroding: route to
positioning-and-story. A new pricing norm means revisit market-to-devs-sell-to-buyers. A dead competitor means an opening. No action, no reason to flag it.
- Update the brief and roadmap. Rewrite the affected lines in
docs/gtm-cofounder/founder-brief.md (rivals, why-you, villain, positioning) with today's reality and the date, and add any positioning move it triggers to docs/gtm-cofounder/gtm-roadmap.md. Keep the tags honest: a competitor's public claim is [assumption] until you have checked it is real.
What actually matters (and what doesn't)
Changes worth acting on:
- A rival repositions onto your wedge or adopts your vocabulary. Your differentiation is eroding. Highest priority.
- A new entrant is getting real traction in your exact lane.
- The category gets renamed (buyers now search a different term than your copy uses).
- A pricing norm shifts (a free tier appears or disappears, seat pricing becomes standard).
Noise to ignore:
- Cosmetic rebrands, new logos, homepage redesigns with the same substance.
- Feature announcements that don't touch your wedge.
- Funding rounds that don't change what the product is or who it is for.
Mistakes that look reasonable
- Reacting to a competitor's launch by copying it. Their move fits their strategy, not yours. Ask what it means for your wedge, not how to match it.
- Scanning everything, changing nothing. A scan that doesn't update the brief or the roadmap was just anxiety with extra steps.
- Treating a rival's marketing claim as fact. "Now with X" on a homepage is a positioning bet, not proof it works. Tag it
[assumption].
- Doing it constantly. Monthly, or on a real trigger (a rebrand, a new entrant), is plenty. Daily competitor-watching is procrastination dressed as diligence.
Your next 30 minutes
Built from real dev-tool GTM experience, with frameworks from Adam Frankl (The Developer-Facing Startup) and Jakub Czakon (markepear.dev).
When a framework can't make the call, that's what a human is for: The DevTool GTM Company.
