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Make a competitive analysis
Turn PDFs into a competitive analysis
Analyst reports, filings and sales decks, read against each other.
Free to try, no card. Your PDF opens in Ancher.
Document structure in orderPage numbersTables as tables
Kept in parts
Every one of these stays separately addressable instead of collapsing into one block of text.
PlayersPositioningFeature matrixPricing
Competitive analysis
A side-by-side read on rivals: positioning, features, pricing, and the space nobody occupies.
Competitor information arrives as documents — an analyst report, a rival's own deck, a filing that names segments. Ancher keeps each one's tables intact so a market share figure stays attached to its definition, holds page numbers on every claim, and separates what a vendor says about itself from what an independent document says about it.
The honest version
Two reports sizing the same market are usually sizing two different markets
Analyst market shares depend on a category definition that lives in a footnote or an appendix, and two firms almost never define a category the same way. Compare the headline percentages and you are comparing arithmetic performed on different populations. The definition is in the document; it is just never on the slide anyone circulates.
One page of one PDF, at p. 62, read two ways.Illustrative. The figure is invented; the gap it falls into is not.
we estimate the market at the figure shown, on the definition set out in
In Appendix B — not readThe specific never reaches the draft
Competitive analysis
In Appendix B
excludes services and SMB
from p. 62
Lands in the draft, with its timecode
- Category definitions are pulled from where they actually live — footnotes and appendices — and stated beside the share figures.
- Vendor-authored documents are kept separate from independent ones.
- Every figure carries the document, the table and the page, so two sources can be compared honestly.
What comes out
Competitive analysis, section by section
A side-by-side read on rivals: positioning, features, pricing, and the space nobody occupies.
Players
Every company named, with which document named it and in what role.
Positioning
How each is described, split into self-description and independent description.
Feature matrix
Feature and segment coverage, filled only where a document states it and left empty otherwise.
Pricing
Prices and list rates as documented, with the document's date attached.
Whitespace
Segments the documents name and nobody is described as serving.
Documents-to-competitive-analysis prompt
The link on its own gets a summary. This is the instruction that produces the 5 sections above, in that order, with the rules that keep them honest. Paste it with your PDFs — in Ancher, or in whatever assistant you already use.
Build a competitive analysis from these documents. (1) List every company named, with the document and the role it was given. (2) Split positioning into self-described and independently described. (3) Fill a matrix cell only where a document states it. (4) Record prices as documented with the document's date. (5) Name segments nobody is described as serving. Pull every category definition from footnotes and appendices and state it beside the share figures.
The detail, if you want it
How each part of a PDF becomes a section
| From the PDF | Into | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Tables as tables | Feature matrix | Coverage and share tables come back intact, so a figure stays attached to the segment definition in its column heading. |
| Page numbers | Pricing | A page anchor is what lets a colleague verify a price claim in a hundred-page report rather than taking it from you. |
| Reading order | Positioning | Sequence survives, so an executive summary's framing can be told apart from the qualified version deeper in. |
| Document structure in order | Whitespace | Headings arrive as headings, which is what makes an appendix of definitions findable at all. |
| Embedded images and figures | Players | Vendor landscape charts state adjacency more precisely than the prose around them, and the caption usually carries the criteria. |
Everything Ancher keeps from a PDF
Document structure in order
Headings, body and captions arrive as separate elements, so the document's own outline survives ingest.
Page numbers
A page-level anchor is what makes a citation checkable by someone else holding the same file.
Tables as tables
Tables come back as their own elements rather than as flattened lines, so a figure stays attached to the row and column that give it meaning.
Embedded images and figures
Figure captions frequently carry the tightest statement of a finding in the whole document.
Reading order
Elements come back in sequence, which is what lets a section be reassembled rather than guessed at.
Word and PowerPoint too
The same path takes .docx and .pptx, so a deck and its write-up can sit in one collection.
The four steps
- Add the PDF. Upload the file. Ancher parses it into ordered elements rather than one flat string, keeps the page number on each, and pulls out the embedded images.
- Nothing gets flattened. Document structure in order, page numbers, tables as tables, embedded images and figures, reading order, word and powerpoint too stay separately addressable instead of collapsing into one block of text.
- Ask for a competitive analysis. Ancher fills players, positioning, feature matrix, pricing, whitespace using the mapping above, not a generic summary pass.
- Check it before you use it. Every specific keeps a link back to where it came from in the PDF, so a claim can be verified without reopening the source.
Where this goes wrong
- Analyst reports are frequently commissioned by someone in the chart. Check the funding disclosure before a position becomes a finding.
- Two reports with different category definitions produce incompatible shares. Comparing the headline numbers without the definitions is the standard error here.
- A vendor's own deck is positioning. It belongs in the analysis as a claim about intent, never as evidence about behaviour.
Questions people ask
Can I compare two analyst reports directly?
Only after reading both category definitions, which are usually in an appendix. If one excludes services and the other does not, the shares are arithmetic on different populations and the comparison is meaningless.
How do you treat a competitor's own deck?
As positioning, kept in its own column. It tells you what they want to be understood as, which is genuinely useful, and it is never treated as evidence that a feature works.
Why leave matrix cells empty?
Because no document states it. An empty cell in a document-sourced matrix means the coverage was never claimed in writing, which is a different and more interesting fact than a missing feature.
Bring your own PDFs
Everything you save lives in one workspace, so the competitive analysis is built from your sources — not from a model's memory of the internet.
Open Ancher →Not a PDF? The same competitive analysis also comes from YouTube video, X thread, LinkedIn post.