[kappamax]

Well in a startup the responsibility of research should be shared by everyone. In our case engineering actually did the competitive analysis AFTER we finished our MVP, while waiting on bizdev. What I'm asking is, is this normal or somewhat abnormal in the startup world, and an isolated problem?

Or are there startups that proceed without doing their homework so to say?

[javajosh]

Yeah, you've got to do solid competition research before building something.

(It sometimes happens that there's something out there that you've never heard of (and no-one you know has heard of it either), in which case you discover the competitor later. Really nothing you can do about this.)