If you have ever had to write a business plan you will remember the part where you need to do a competitor analysis. Who are your competitors? What are their weaknesses and strengths? And so on and so forth. Over the past few days I have been thinking about that question. Who are our competitors? My conclusion – we have none.

Stating that we have no competitors is not a proud “we are better than everyone else” declaration. It is also not stating that we are the only ones who work in this area of expertise. It is simply saying that we see those who also work in web development as our peers not as our competitors. We’ve sat with 37signals in Chicago and talked as friends (and also swapped silverorange hoodies for 37Signals t-shirts). We’ve had beer in San Francisco with Doug of stopdesign and shared ideas and info about our latest interesting work. We intentionally share a building with another Charlottetown based web development company. We talk on a regular basis through email and blogs to designers around the world. We share our knowledge and rely heavily on others’ experience and feedback. We’re a community not competitors.

We feel we are working in a post competitive industry and perhaps even a post competitive era.

Inevitably we sometimes bump into each other on a piece of work or a proposal. Sometimes we get the work, other times we don’t. We never regret losing a project to our peers. There always seems to be enough work for all of us.