Accepted as the norm.

Mental clarity is more valuable than any tool or skill.

Yeah. Who would have thought AI chat bots the can’t understand you were the future way back when reading 2000AD and The Eagle.

There are some shockingly shxx AI “competitive intelligence” tools coming out at the moment. Monitoring and secondary research for 4 year olds. Delighted to keep seeing them. I have asked my dogs to come with a better solution. #competitiveintelligence

The sales exec who lost the deal is the worst source on why the deal was lost. Global People-Powered Win-Loss Interviews | Octopus Competitive Intelligence Agency | octopusintelligence.com/win-…

"There is no such thing as transparent intelligence". A direct challenge to anyone who thinks competitive intelligence is just pulling data from the internet or running a dashboard report. Real intelligence — the kind that changes decisions — is never sitting in plain sight waiting to be found. It has to be sought, sourced, and interpreted. Global People-Powered Competitive Intelligence | Octopus Competitive Intelligence Agency | octopusintelligence.com/

The Weakness Illusion If your competitor loses a major customer, you might think they’re weakening. If they cut prices, you might assume they’re desperate. If they lay off employees, you might believe they’re failing. It’s easy to see these signs and assume they’re in decline. octopusintelligence.com/the-… Global People-Powered Competitive Intelligence | Octopus Competitive Intelligence Agency

SaaS New Entrant Radar 4th October 2026 Octopus, the global people-powered (with great monitoring capabilities) competitive intelligence agency octopusintelligence.com/saas…

October is a terrible month for spelling mistakes here at Octopus. That’s without autocorrect.

New website is in production.

Do you still have your first business card? Do people even carry business cards anymore? I’ve given up years ago

What questions are prospects asking in your sales calls that reveal your competitor is quietly repositioning against you with a pitch you've never actually heard? Global People-Powered Competitive Intelligence | Octopus Competitive Intelligence Agency | octopusintelligence.com/

This is so true: "If you spend too much time thinking about the past, you miss out on what you have right now. Reflecting, learning, and moving on is a fruitful cycle. But replaying old mistakes and revisiting past injustices is a fast way to lose the opportunity of today. Don't let one bad event beat you twice." @JamesClear

"THEY NEVER DISCOUNT." Actually.... "They offered me 22% and three months free on the first call." Global People-Powered B2B Mystery Shopping | Octopus Competitive Intelligence Agency | octopusintelligence.com/b2b-…

"Happy" customers churn all the time. Happy just means they like you. It doesn't mean they know why they're paying you.

I've been working in tech for more than 30 years. I still don't have all the answers. But I've learned to ask better questions. Why do customers stay? What creates real value? What will AI actually change? What are SaaS companies getting wrong?

All four labelled: "Deals we closed as 'timing'" We do People-Powered WIn-Loss Interviews and Analysis | Octopus Competitive Intelligence Agency | octopusintelligence.com/win-…

Every objection-handling document is fiction until you hear one handled. Global People-Powered B2B Mystery Shopping | Octopus Competitive Intelligence Agency | octopusintelligence.com/b2b-…

Founders love adding things. New features. New hires. New markets. New meetings. New tools. But a lot of startups would move faster if they got better at deleting things. Kill the feature nobody uses. Cancel the meeting nobody needs. Stop selling to the customer who takes 10x the work. Drop the project that sounded good six months ago. Startups don’t usually run out of ideas. They run out of time and attention.

You know what the SAS's problem is, according to Monica Grenfell, a civil servant who worked at their HQ? They ‘swear all the time,’ she said, which was not acceptable in other workplaces, adding: ‘You can’t go into M&S and say [someone] is a f***ing c***.’. As she put it, ‘there are nasty characters there and nasty characters who really ruled the roost.’ I am not making this up. She really did say it in an interview with the Times. It hasn't had anything like the attention it needs as an illustration of how far some of our public servants have lost contact with reality. I hate to break this to Monica Grenfell, but soldiers of all regiments swear a lot. The SAS have a quite different job from sales assistants in clothes shops. ✍️ Andrew Gilligan Article | spectator.com/article/we-nee… | @mragilligan