Existing Solutions Analysis SOP

An existing solutions analysis SOP shows you how your customers handle the problem right now, and what your product has to beat to make them switch. It takes one to two weeks. The list always holds more than competitors: spreadsheets, email threads, a cousin who is good with numbers, an assistant paid by the hour, and doing nothing at all. Founders who only study rival apps miss that their real rival is a habit that costs nothing.

What is the existing solutions analysis SOP and when should you use it?

This SOP builds an inventory of every current alternative for one problem, scored from the customer's side: how many people use it, what it costs, how satisfied they are and what would make them leave. It draws on Clayton Christensen's Jobs to Be Done idea from Competing Against Luck: customers "hire" a solution for a job, and non-consumption (doing nothing) is a competitor too. It also uses Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek's four forces of progress: the push of the current situation, the pull of something new, anxiety about the new thing and the habit of the present.

Use this SOP:

• After the problem passed interviews, to learn what "good enough" looks like to customers today.
• When interviewees say "I just use Excel", a sign that the bar to beat is a free, familiar tool.
• Before you write a lean canvas, to fill the "Existing Alternatives" box that Ash Maurya added for this reason.

Scope check: this SOP studies alternatives through the customer's eyes. To build a list of companies you compete with, use the competitor identification SOP. To compare rival products feature by feature, use the competitor solution analysis SOP.

What do you need before you start?

• A validated problem statement and one customer group.
• Notes from 10+ customer interviews with the question "What do you do about this today?" answered.
• Accounts on review sites your customers use: G2 and Capterra for B2B software, App Store and Google Play for apps, Trustpilot for services, plus relevant subreddits.
• A spreadsheet using the alternatives matrix below.

How do you run it, step by step?

1. List alternatives in five buckets

Write down every alternative you heard or can find, sorted into dedicated products, general tools (spreadsheets, email, WhatsApp), hired help (freelancers, agencies, assistants), manual workarounds and doing nothing. Aim for 10 to 20 entries. The last two buckets are where most first-time founders have gaps.

2. Count usage from your interviews

Go back through interview notes and tag what each person uses today. Count how many use each alternative and how many combine two or more. A customer who uses three tools stitched together is telling you no single tool does the job.

3. Run 6 to 8 switch interviews

Find people who changed their method in the last six months, such as moving from spreadsheets to an app or dropping a tool. Ask what made them start looking, what they almost chose, what worried them and what made them commit. Record answers under the four forces: push, pull, anxiety, habit.

4. Mine 50 to 100 negative reviews

For the top three dedicated products, read 1 to 3 star reviews from the last 12 months. Tag each complaint with a short label and count them. Complaints that repeat across all three products point to a gap the whole category shares.

5. Score each alternative

For each alternative fill in usage share, monthly cost in money and hours, satisfaction (1 to 5 from interviews and reviews) and switching effort (data migration, retraining, contracts). Use the customers' numbers, not vendor pricing pages alone.

6. Find the gap and the bar to beat

Look for alternatives with high usage and low satisfaction: that is the gap. Then write the bar to beat in one line: what your product has to match before anyone listens to what it does better. If the most used alternative is free and rated 4 or higher, think hard before you continue.

Template you can copy

ALTERNATIVES MATRIX (one row per alternative)
Alternative | Bucket (product / general tool / hired help / manual / nothing) |
Users in interviews (n of N) | Monthly cost $ | Monthly hours |
Satisfaction 1–5 | Top 3 complaints | Switching effort (low/med/high) | Notes

SWITCH INTERVIEW QUESTIONS (20 min)
1. What were you using before? When did you first think about changing?
2. What happened that day that made you start looking?        (push)
3. What did you hope the new option would do for you?          (pull)
4. What almost stopped you from switching?                     (anxiety)
5. What did you miss about the old way, if anything?           (habit)
6. What else did you look at? Why didn't you pick it?

REVIEW TAGGING COLUMNS
Product | Stars | Date | Complaint tag | Quote | Reviewer role/size

BAR TO BEAT (one sentence)
"To get a hearing, we must [match X] at [cost/effort level Y],
and we win if we [fix complaint Z] that [n] of [N] people raised."

Worked example: small accounting firms collecting client documents

This is an illustrative case. A founder targets accounting firms with 2 to 10 staff that chase clients for receipts and bank statements every quarter. From 16 interviews she lists 12 alternatives.

Email is used by 14 of 16 firms, costs nothing and scores 2.1 for satisfaction. Shared cloud folders are used by 9, scored 2.8. The client portal inside the firm's accounting software is used by 6 and scored 3.0. A dedicated document collection tool is used by 2. Five firms pay a part-time assistant, at about 15 hours a month, mostly to chase missing files.

She reads 84 negative reviews across three portal products. 31 of them say the same thing in different words: clients refuse to create yet another login. Switch interviews confirm it: two firms dropped a portal because older clients kept emailing files anyway.

Her bar to beat: "Match email's zero-setup experience for the client, and win by telling the firm what is still missing without anyone chasing by hand." That sentence feeds straight into her problem-solution fit canvas.

What should you measure, and when do you stop?

Stop when new interviews and reviews add no new alternatives or complaint tags. If customers are happy with a free option, the problem is real but solved: look for a sharper segment or a different problem.

Which mistakes should you avoid?

• Listing only apps. Spreadsheets, email and hired help are what most people use, and they set the price expectation.
• Ignoring "do nothing". If most people tolerate the problem, your marketing has to create urgency before it can sell features.
• Reading only five-star reviews. Praise tells you what to match. Complaints tell you where to win.
• Trusting vendor pricing pages. The real cost includes hours, add-ons and the assistant who fixes the gaps.
• Skipping anxiety and habit. A better product loses when switching feels risky. Plan to reduce that fear from day one.

How can AI speed this up?

Paste 50 to 100 reviews into an AI assistant and ask it to tag complaints, count each tag and quote two examples per tag. Ask it to suggest alternatives you have not listed for the job your customer is doing, then check each one with a real customer before adding it. AI can summarise switch interviews into the four forces, but read the transcripts too: anxiety shows up in pauses and jokes that summaries drop. To turn the findings into strengths and weaknesses, the free SWOT analysis generator gives you a first draft, and the F/MS startup tool reviews help you check what popular tools do.

Where does this SOP fit in your validation plan?

Run it after customer interviews and problem ranking, and before problem monetization assessment, since current spend is the best predictor of what people will pay. The bar to beat feeds the problem-solution fit canvas. Later, in the competition stage, the feature comparison SOP goes deeper on the products from this list. See all ten SOPs on the Problem Validation page.

FAQ

What is the difference between existing solutions and competitors?

Competitors are companies selling something similar. Existing solutions are everything customers use for the job today, including spreadsheets, freelancers and doing nothing. The second list is wider and more honest.

What if there are no existing solutions?

Then ask why. Either the problem is too small to bother with, or people handle it with a manual workaround you have not found yet. A truly untouched problem with real cost is rare, so check twice.

How many reviews should I read?

50 to 100 negative reviews across the top three products. After that, new reviews repeat the same complaint tags.

Can I use AI to find existing solutions?

Yes, as a starting list. Then confirm each alternative with real customers, because AI lists products that exist and misses the spreadsheet your customers built themselves.