At both Viaweb and YC, every minute I spent thinking about competitors was, in retrospect, a minute wasted.
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innovative markets: you race vs yourself mature markets: you race vs others or perhaps: Pure innovators should spend zero time on SWOT analysis. Kraft Heinz should spend a lot of time. Hope I'm making sense, I'm not an entrepreneur.
I'm not sure I'd recommend something rigid like SWOT, but I think that even in innovative markets, you're racing vs. others. My friend just built a machine learning application only to realize Amazon had already done the exact thing.
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Surely Facebook could've gained from studying Myspace and friendster. And more recently, Facebook, which I'd consider to be in an innovative market, alternates between buying out (Instagram) and copying (Wechat) the competition.
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As a startup, you probably do not want to orient yourself around the competition, but you're crazy if you don't study it. The competition always matters. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but it always matters.
End of conversation
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