Build in Public Day 3: Competitive Deep Dive — Finding the Gaps

We know the problem is real. We know it's widespread. Now we need to understand the competition deeply enough to find our opening.

The Research Prompt

I went back to Claude with a detailed prompt: research each competitor's systems in depth. I wanted to understand how their products work, what they can do, what they can't do, and most importantly — what the market is saying about them. I directed it to forums, Reddit, Quora, and anywhere lawyers discuss the tools they use.

The goal was threefold: understand baseline expectations for what we need to build, identify specific gaps we can exploit, and inform our positioning and pricing strategy.

What Claude Produced

The output was extraordinary — and it only took a couple of minutes. On the summary side, Claude created a table of key competitors with their respective strengths and weaknesses. On the document side, it produced a comprehensive report with an executive summary, a competitor comparison table (including approach, pricing, funding, and target market), and detailed profiles for each competitor.

The comparison table alone was incredibly valuable. It showed each competitor's approach (practice management, AI-focused, time tracking), their pricing (some transparent, many enterprise and opaque), how much funding they've raised (Clio at nearly a billion), and who they target. This gives us a clear picture of where we might fit.

The Detailed Profiles

For each competitor, Claude created a profile covering how their system works, key features, capabilities and limitations, and market sentiment from real users. The limitations tables are the most strategically valuable pieces — they show exactly where each competitor falls short.

Market sentiment sections pull real user feedback: what people like, what frustrates them, and what they wish was different. This directly informs our solution design. Every complaint about a competitor is a potential feature for us.

What I Noticed Visiting Competitor Sites

I also visited competitor websites directly. Two observations stood out with one competitor in particular. First, they don't offer self-service access — it's entirely sales-led, meaning you can't try the product yourself. Second, pricing isn't published anywhere on the site. Both represent opportunities for us: a product-led approach where prospects can explore freely, and transparent pricing that the market has indicated it wants.

Strategic Opportunities

Claude identified underserved market segments (particularly small to mid-size firms), feature gaps we can exploit, and go-to-market opportunities. The key insight: in the beginning, it's usually easier to get the attention of smaller firms. But if our product is competitive, moving up-market may happen faster than expected.

One common mistake founders make at this stage: seeing funded competitors and thinking the opportunity is closed. The opposite is true. Funded competitors validate the market. The question is whether you can serve a segment they're ignoring or solve a problem they're solving poorly.

Your Takeaway

Don't just know who your competitors are — know their weaknesses. Use Claude to build detailed profiles with capabilities, limitations, and real market sentiment. Then visit their sites yourself and look for what they're NOT doing. No self-service? No pricing transparency? No focus on small firms? Those gaps become your positioning strategy.

Next in the series: Day 4 — Landing Page. We take all this research and turn it into a live marketing asset.

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