28 — Competitive positioning & ICP workbook

Go Past Earth — Overhead and Operations (OAO) • CEO, product, sales • April 2026

Purpose: Stay grounded when comparing this platform to suite-scale competitors (Lightspeed-class: broad retail/restaurant OS plus ecosystem). Living document: copy tables into Notion or a deck, fill honestly, refresh quarterly.

Related: 00 — CEO Strategic Overview (Markdown) · 25 — Platform Coverage (what exists in code vs aspirational) · Markdown source (same content, version control)

1 — Three lenses (read this before roadmap panic)

1.1 Coverage vs depth

Suite competitors optimize for breadth: many workflows are “good enough” and completed through integrations (accounting, payroll, ecommerce, loyalty vendors, marketplaces).

You may legitimately choose depth: fewer workflows, owned end-to-end (POS, invoicing backbone, tenant model, inventory, Bridge, crypto, etc.). That is a strategy, not evidence that the company is “not real.”

Decision rule: If your ideal customer can run their week without duct tape in the areas you claim, breadth gaps elsewhere are often integrate or defer, not existential.

1.2 Ecosystem gravity

What people feel as “Lightspeed is complete” is often distribution and trust, not only software:

• Certified hardware and payment device narratives
• Payment rails and acquiring relationships
• App marketplaces and accountant/bookkeeper familiarity
• Brand recall in RFPs and banks

That gravity is built with years of partnerships and marketing. It is not the same task list as “finish the POS API.”

Decision rule: Separate “we need feature X for parity” from “we need partner Y or certification Z for trust in channel C.”

1.3 Enterprise table stakes

For larger deals, buyers often weight artifacts that sit beside the POS:

• Security posture and SOC 2 (or roadmap plus controls narrative)
• SLAs, support tiers, escalation paths
• Formal onboarding, migration assistance, training
• Procurement-friendly contracts, DPAs, subprocessors list

These are often separate workstreams from core product engineering. Missing one in early stage is normal; missing it on a deliberate enterprise push is a gap to plan, not a reason to doubt the whole product.

2 — Ideal customer profile (ICP) in one sentence

Template (copy and edit):

We win with [vertical or business type] at [size band: locations, seats, GMV, headcount] who care most about [primary pain] and who are frustrated by [incumbent or workaround].

Your live ICP (fill in): use the blank lines in the Markdown workbook or print this page and write in the margins.

Anti-pattern: “Everyone from food truck to enterprise” — impossible to sell, prioritize, or document honestly.

3 — Top ten daily workflows — comparison matrix

Use this against any suite (Lightspeed, Toast, Clover, Square for Retail, etc.). The “Go Past Earth (directional)” column is your honest read today; replace as the product moves.

Gap tags

How to use: Read each row aloud with your ICP sentence from section 2. Only must-build rows are allowed to block positioning for that segment.

4 — Suite checklist without losing the plot

When a competitor ships a module you do not have, run it through this order:

1. Does my ICP use it weekly? If no → not our market or defer.
2. Is it a commodity integration? If yes → integrate (document partner, not rebuild).
3. Is it trust / procurement? If yes → enterprise table stakes (section 1.3), often a parallel track.
4. Only then → must-build.

5 — Review cadence

6 — Summary

Being smaller than a public suite is not the same as being incomplete. Completeness for your ICP is the bar. Use the three lenses to classify work, then ship the smallest honest slice.