Top 5

Also: Amazon invests in a notable AI firm, X can't catch a break, competitive partnerships, and more

Andy McCotter-Bicknell
September 28, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Hey, hi, hello 👋

Been spending a ton of time working on a fun new project.

Not quite ready to announce it yet. But if you want to be the first to know, make sure you follow me on LinkedIn. I’m announcing it this coming Monday and will then re-share in next week’s newsletter.

Anyway—all that to say I’ve been heads down in planning mode, so no new mini blog this week.

Instead, I figured now would be a good time to share a “best of” collection. Here are the five most popular editions of the Healthy Competition newsletter since the start of the year. Hope you enjoy!

Presented by Groopit

Most Competitive Intelligence programs are run by small, passionate teams.

Despite their motivation, it's impossible to stay on top of frequent market changes if they work alone.

That's why the most important first step in building a competitive intel program is to create a culture of compete. This encourages all employees—sales, marketing, product, etc.—to share their competitive intel and expertise.

Groopit makes this easy.

Groopit simplifies how companies get and use intel from employees, through an underlying data model. In just 3 clicks, employees share intel from wherever they work, such as Teams, Slack, and Salesforce. Groopit AI then analyzes insights, summarizes actionable intelligence, and delivers a ready-to-publish report.

This way, CI leaders can operate with agility and speed in delivering the right info to the right teams.

JUICY SCOOPS 🧃

What’s happening now

💰 | Amazon invested $1.25B in AI startup, Anthropic—signaling their intent to continue rivaling Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Nvidia in the AI space.
🥤 | A mega-influencer is giving Coca-Cola and Pepsi a run for their money.
🧑‍💻 | PhonePe launched an Indian-based app store to give developers a localized, credible alternative to the Google Play store.
𝗫 | Elon Musk’s X continues to see an uptick in competitive activity:
- Bluesky hit a daily active user record after Musk posted that he’s considering charging all X users a small monthly fee
- Artifact, a news-aggregator app from the co-founders of Instagram, now allows users to make posts
🤝 | A couple partnerships between competitors to be aware of:
- TikTok is testing showing Google results in its search pages
- Uber and LA Yellow Cab struck a deal to allow riders use the Uber app and potentially have taxi drivers pick them up

EXAMPLES 🍊

Your weekly dose of vitamin C(ompete)

Check out this video of Steve Jobs introducing the first iPhone.

The whole video is worth watching, but pay close attention at the 3:26 mark.

In just a few short minutes, Jobs masterfully explains everything that’s wrong with the smartphone category and how the iPhone would surpass every competitor, such as the Moto Q, BlackBerry, Palm Treo, and Nokia E62.

COMPETE GEEKS ONLY 🛑✋

From the Community

1,000+ messages are shared every month by Product Marketers and Competitive Intel practitioners in the Healthy Competition community. Here are some recent threads that got folks talking.