The Chess-Points Competitive Lens
Every release is a move against your competitor in the customer's mind — positive or negative, never neutral.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 92%
Parmar's core competitive philosophy: products are never static — every shipped feature makes yours better or worse from the customer's perspective, and customers implicitly compare you to competitors on every release. So each ship is a chess move that either gains or loses points against rivals. The framework forces you to evaluate roadmap decisions by their relative competitive impact, not in isolation, and to be explicit about your differentiator and positioning.
Origin
Varun Parmar's own philosophy, developed over ~24 years in collaboration and productivity software (Adobe Document Cloud, Box, Miro). He credits the sharpening of competitive thinking to observing category leaders like Microsoft enter and reshape markets.
Core principles
- 01Products get better or worse over time — they never remain the same.
- 02Customers always compare you to alternatives, explicitly or implicitly, so evaluate releases from the end-user's comparative perspective.
- 03The success or growth rate of a company is a direct function of what the competition allows it to do.
- 04Competitive strength has three dimensions: solution quality (is it good enough?), distribution reach, and pricing/packaging.
- 05Winning is about making your unique value legible relative to everything else in the customer's ecosystem — not being a marginally better clone.
How to run it
- 1
Adopt the never-neutral frame
Treat every code push to production as a move that either improves or degrades the product from the customer's point of view. Reject the idea that any release is neutral.
Pro tip Judge the release through the end-user's eyes, not the team's — the customer is the scorekeeper.
- 2
Score each move against the competitor
For each release, ask whether it gains or loses points versus the alternatives the customer is weighing. This drives clarity on what to build and why.
Watch out Do not over-obsess into pure catch-up feature-matching — Parmar admits balancing this is unsolved; anchor moves to your differentiator.
- 3
Diagnose competitor strength on three axes
Assess how strong the competitor is on (a) providing a good-enough solution, (b) distribution outreach, and (c) pricing and packaging. Your response strategy depends on which axis they lead on.
Pro tip A competitor with the 'might of distribution and might of pricing' (e.g. Microsoft) demands a different play than a feature-parity rival.
- 4
Sharpen and defend your unique value
Make sure the customer can clearly understand your unique value relative to all other players, then continue investing in that differentiator and in positioning that explains why you are different, not just better or worse.
Pro tip Ask: in the customer's mind, can they see how you coexist in the ecosystem they've invested in?
In the wild
Building async collaboration, Miro had two choices: do screen recording like everyone else (spitting out captured-pixel videos) or take a different path. They synchronized the movement of the board with the audio/video talk track, so a viewer can add sticky notes, comments and reactions while the recording plays — leaning into collaboration as Miro's sweet spot rather than matching competitors on communication.
→ A distinctive capability that reinforced Miro's team-collaboration differentiation instead of a me-too screen recorder.
Common mistakes
Ignoring competition to 'just focus on the customer'
Parmar explicitly pushes back on the common advice to ignore competitors. Because customers compare you to alternatives on every release, staying close to and understanding the competition well is essential to making high-quality bets.
Positioning yourself as a better/worse version of a rival
If customers only see you as a marginally better or worse clone, you lose. The point-scoring only works if your moves ladder up to a clear, unique differentiator.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product leaders in crowded, fast-moving categories deciding where to invest limited roadmap capacity against strong incumbents or new entrants.
Not ideal for
True blue-ocean products with no direct or indirect competitor, where relative-move scoring adds little.
From the transcript
“with every release that your competitor is making and every lease that you're making you're either may you know making chess points moves against them…”
“products either get better over a period of time or they get worse products never remain the same”
“the success of a company is a direct relation of what the competition allows you to do”
“how strong is the competitor in terms of providing a good enough Solution that's one and the second is how strong is the competition in…”
From the episode
An inside look at how Miro builds product: Lessons on outmaneuvering competitors, team structure, product quality, and moving fast
Varun Parmar (CPO of Miro)