Competitors & Competitive Intel

This folder contains structured competitor profiles for Meridia. Each file follows the Template Competitor.md schema and feeds into the 🔒Competitors.base dashboard.

Dashboard

How This System Works

Each competitor file has structured frontmatter (type: competitor) with fields for category, threat level, revenue model, audience overlap, data potential, employee count, and traffic. The Competitors.base queries these files and provides filtered views:

• All Competitors — full table sorted by threat level
• By Category — grouped by type (fishing-platform, boat-rental, adventure-booking, etc.)
• Needs Review — overdue or never-reviewed competitors
• High Threat — direct threats only
• Direct Fishing Comps — fishing-specific competitors across all subcategories
• Data Sources — competitors worth mining for data (filtered by data_potential)

Competitor Categories

Threat Levels

• High — direct overlap with Meridia's core value prop (conditions + booking + destinations for fishing). Monitor closely.
• Medium — partial overlap or adjacent positioning. Watch for expansion into our space.
• Low — tangential or different market. Useful for UX inspiration and data sourcing, not competitive threats.

Data Potential

Separate from threat level — some low-threat competitors are high-value data sources.

• High — rich data we can source from (destinations, rivers, gauges, APIs). Worth reverse-engineering their data pipeline.
• Medium — useful reference data or public dataset integration worth studying.
• Low — minimal data value beyond their own product.
• None — no data sourcing opportunity.

Competitive Intel Automation Plan

Status: Post-launch. Build this after Meridia ships.

Phase 1: Automated Data Collection (bi-weekly cron)

Build _scripts/update_competitor_intel.py that runs every 2 weeks:

1. Traffic estimates — SimilarWeb or SEMrush API to update monthly_traffic on all competitor files. Single most useful metric for sizing competitors.
2. Employee count — Scrape LinkedIn company pages to update employees field. Headcount changes signal growth/contraction.
3. Job postings — Scan LinkedIn/Indeed for competitor hiring. When FishingBooker posts "Head of Partnerships" or OnX posts "Fly Fishing Product Manager," that's a leading indicator of strategic moves.
4. App store data — For competitors with apps (OnX Fish, FishBrain, GetMyBoat, Boatsetter): ratings, review count, review themes.
5. Auto-update frontmatter — Script updates monthly_traffic, employees, last_reviewed, next_review fields directly.
6. Append to Intel Log — Any notable changes get appended to the ## Intel Log section in each file.

Phase 2: Full Workups (manual, one-time)

Deep-dive the 5 high-threat competitors first:

• FishBrain.com
• FishingBooker.com
• 🔒OnX Fish
• 🔒TheFlyBook.com
• 🔒RiverReports.com

Fill out the full template: Product & Features, What They Do Well/Poorly, Audience & Positioning, Differentiation, Data Source Potential, What We Can Steal.

What NOT to automate

• Social content monitoring — noise, not signal. You don't need to know what FishBrain posted on Instagram.
• SEO keyword tracking — premature until Meridia is competing on content.
• News/press monitoring — not enough volume across 26 mostly-small competitors to justify a pipeline.
• Social follower counts — grab once, update quarterly at most. Doesn't change fast enough.

Cron Setup

# bi-weekly competitor intel update (post-launch)
# 0 8 1,15 * * python3 /Users/kj/Documents/KJBrain/_scripts/update_competitor_intel.py

Cross-Links

Competitor notes auto-surface related Meridia ideas via a dataview query in each file's ## Related Ideas section. When an idea note links to a competitor (via relatedTo or inline wikilink), it appears automatically on that competitor's page.

Related

• Data Sourcing Index — maps content types to sourcing channels (many competitors double as data sources)
• Ideas README — Meridia ideas system (many ideas originate from competitive research)
• 🔒Competitors.base — queryable dashboard
• 🔒Template Competitor — template for new competitor entries