Competitive Intelligence for VCs: Knowing the Landscape

Competitive intelligence in venture capital is usually anecdotal. Partners share impressions from founder meetings. Associates read blog posts. Analysts glance at Crunchbase profiles. This ad hoc approach leaves massive gaps in understanding the competitive dynamics of any given market.

Why Competitive Intelligence Matters for VCs

Investment Decisions

Before investing in a company, you need to understand its competitive landscape. Who are the other players? How fast are they growing? What signals indicate their relative strength? A company might look impressive in isolation but mediocre relative to a competitor that is hiring twice as fast and shipping product three times more frequently.

Deal Pricing

Competitive intelligence informs valuation. If the market leader is growing at 3x the rate of the company you are evaluating, the premium you should pay for the market leader is calculable. Conversely, if the market leader is showing deceleration signals while the company you are evaluating is accelerating, the valuation calculus shifts.

Portfolio Support

Once you have invested, competitive intelligence helps you support portfolio companies. Knowing what competitors are doing — their hiring patterns, product launches, marketing strategies, and partnership activities — allows you to provide informed strategic advice.

Signal-Based Competitive Intelligence

Company-Level Signals

For each company in a competitive set, track:

• Headcount trajectory: Who is growing fastest?
• Hiring composition: Who is investing in sales vs. engineering?
• Funding history and timing: Who has more runway?
• Product cadence: Who is shipping more frequently?
• Press velocity: Who is capturing more attention?
• Customer signal strength: Who is adding logos faster?

Market-Level Signals

Beyond individual companies, track market-wide signals:

• Total hiring across the sector: Is the market growing or contracting?
• Funding round frequency: Is capital flowing into the space?
• M&A activity: Are acquirers interested?
• Regulatory developments: Are new rules creating opportunity or risk?
• Conference and event activity: Is the sector gaining or losing visibility?

Relative Positioning

The most valuable competitive intelligence is relative, not absolute. A company growing headcount at 50% per quarter is impressive — unless its top competitor is growing at 150%. Context is everything.

Building a Competitive Intelligence Workflow

1. Define the competitive set. For each thesis area, identify the 10-20 most relevant companies.

2. Configure signal monitoring. Track all signal categories for each company in the set.

3. Review weekly. Dedicate 30 minutes per week to reviewing competitive signal changes.

4. Update before meetings. Before any founder meeting or board meeting, review the competitive signal data for that company's market.

5. Share with portfolio. Relevant competitive intelligence is valuable to your portfolio companies. Share signal-based insights as part of your value-add.

The Ted Approach

Ted's Enterprise plan includes competitive intelligence capabilities. Define competitive sets for your thesis areas and portfolio companies, and Ted monitors signals across the entire landscape. Weekly reports highlight the most significant competitive signal changes, and daily emails flag urgent competitive developments.

The result is that every investment decision and every portfolio company conversation is informed by current, systematic competitive data — not anecdotes and impressions.