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title: "Our competitor is doing it" is the worst justification for a tech investment
author: Giacomo Balli
published: 2026-09-11
url: https://BigBalli.com/blog/our-competitor-is-doing-it-is-the-worst-justification-for-a-tech-investment
tags: Engineering, Product, Reading, Finance, Business
---

# "Our competitor is doing it" is the worst justification for a tech investment

*By Giacomo Balli* | *Published: September 11, 2026*

"Our competitor is doing it" may be the worst justification for a technology investment that a sensible executive regularly accepts.

It tells you nothing about whether the competitor is right. Companies announce projects; they do not announce the ones that quietly stopped. The app you saw in their press release may already be the thing their CFO is trying to kill.

It tells you nothing about whether it applies to you. They may have a different customer, a different margin, a different reason. A competitor with a warehouse in every state has a use for route optimisation software that a competitor with one warehouse does not.

And it puts the decision in the competitor's hands, which is a strange place to put $300k of your own money.

The moment to be most careful is when the sentence arrives with urgency attached: "we're falling behind." Urgency is how a weak business case skips the questions a strong one would answer easily.

The better question is the one the competitor's announcement cannot answer: what would this change for our customers, and would they pay for it or stay because of it? If yes, the competitor is irrelevant and you should do it. If no, the competitor is irrelevant and you should not.

Either way, the competitor is not a reason. They are, at most, a reminder to ask the question yourself.

[Discuss on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7506779080575463425)

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**Tags:** Engineering, Product, Reading, Finance, Business

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