A conversation I have had twice this year is a founder worrying about competitor
By Ted Gibson · September 4, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
A conversation I have had twice this year is a founder worrying about competitors who turn out to be a lot smaller than they look.
In the most recent one we pulled the actual figures up on the call. The number one ranked product in the category was doing about thirty thousand a month. The established rival they were most worried about was doing around seventy five. Search volume on the main category term was roughly a quarter of the volume on an adjacent term, and it has been trending down for a year.
Meanwhile that adjacent category, which they had treated as a side line and had one product sitting in, had a new entrant doing close to a hundred thousand a month within a few months of launching.
None of that was obvious from inside the business, and I do not think it reflects badly on anybody. Founders benchmark against the competitors they can see rather than against the demand that exists, because you know your rivals by name, you look at their listings, you feel the pressure of them, and none of that tells you how big the pond actually is. Fifteen minutes with search volume data reframed about a year of planning.
The uncomfortable version of this is that being the best product in a small category is a weaker position than being the fourth best in a large one, at least while you are still trying to grow.
Which would you rather be building from, first in the small pond or fourth in the big one?