The competitive landscape slide is the pitch-deck slide naming the alternatives a customer might choose instead of the startup, with the startup's positioning against each. It covers direct competitors, indirect competitors, and the status-quo workaround, designed to acknowledge real competition honestly and demonstrate that the founders understand the market they're entering. It is the slide where the "we have no competition" mistake gets made most often, and where investors most quickly lose confidence in founders who haven't done the work.
The two common formats and their failure modes: the 2x2 grid (place competitors on an X-Y axis where you're conveniently in the desirable upper-right; the trap is choosing axes th...