The first time you open Horizonwatch, the objective is simple: set up your competitive landscape so the AI has what it needs to start monitoring. This takes about 30 minutes. After that, the system runs itself.
Here's what to do.
Before you start: know who you're watching
Horizonwatch works best when you've thought through your competitive landscape before you start entering names.
Pull up your last competitive sales deal. Who were the alternatives your prospect was evaluating? That's your Tier 1 list -- the companies you're in active deals against. Start there.
Then add two or three more: companies you watch even when they're not in specific deals. Adjacent players. Funded startups in your space. The obvious name you don't compete against yet but will within 12 months.
A starting set of 5-8 competitors is ideal. You can always add more. But don't enter 20 on day one -- you'll get more signal than you can act on, and it dilutes the briefings.
Step 1: Add your first competitor (5 minutes)
Navigate to Competitors in the left sidebar and click Add competitor.
Enter the company name. Horizonwatch will find their website, LinkedIn profile, and G2 listing automatically. Review the auto-populated fields and add anything it missed.
Under Monitoring priorities, tell the system what matters most for this competitor:
- Pricing changes -- recommended for all competitors
- Product updates -- recommended for direct competitors
- Hiring signals -- recommended for competitors where headcount is a strategic signal
- Customer sentiment -- recommended for competitors where you're actively winning/losing deals against them
Set the priority tier: Primary (daily briefing), Secondary (weekly briefing), or Watch (monthly summary).
Step 2: Add the rest of your list (10 minutes)
Repeat Step 1 for each competitor on your list. Use the bulk import if you're adding more than five -- paste a list of company names or URLs and Horizonwatch resolves the profiles in batch.
For your Tier 1 competitors, complete the Competitive profile section:
- Your current win/loss rate against them
- The top 2-3 reasons you win deals where they're present
- The top 2-3 reasons you lose deals where they're present
- Your pricing position relative to theirs
This context trains the AI to prioritize signals that are relevant to your actual competitive situation, not just surface-level company activity.
Step 3: Set up your team's briefing preferences (5 minutes)
Navigate to Settings > Briefings.
Briefing format: Choose between Summary (3-5 bullet intelligence brief, best for executives and sales leaders) and Full analysis (longer synthesis with context and implications, best for strategy teams and product leaders).
Delivery timing: Most teams set briefings to arrive at 7:30-8:00 AM in their local timezone -- before the workday starts, in time to brief the team in standup.
Subscriber list: Add teammates who should receive the briefing. Each person can customize their own format preference. Sales team members typically prefer Summary. Strategy leads typically prefer Full analysis.
Alert thresholds: Separately from daily briefings, you can configure real-time alerts for high-signal events: pricing changes, executive hires/departures, funding announcements, major product launches. Set these for your Tier 1 competitors if you want immediate notification rather than waiting for the daily briefing.
Step 4: Review your first briefing (5 minutes)
Horizonwatch runs an initial pass on your competitive landscape as soon as you complete setup. Your first briefing will be available within a few hours (subsequent briefings run on your configured schedule).
When you review it, look for:
- Is the signal level right? If you're seeing too many low-significance updates, tighten your monitoring priorities. If you're seeing too little, expand them.
- Are the implications relevant? If the AI's "what this means" synthesis isn't connecting to your actual competitive situation, add more context to your competitive profiles.
- Is the competitor coverage complete? If there are signals you know happened that aren't appearing, check that the relevant signal source is enabled in the competitor's monitoring settings.
The first briefing is usually good. It gets sharper over the first two weeks as the AI learns your competitive context.
Step 5: Connect Horizonwatch to your workflow (5 minutes)
Intelligence is only useful if it reaches the people who need it. Connect Horizonwatch to where your team already works:
Slack: Install the Horizonwatch Slack app and select a channel for briefing delivery. We recommend a dedicated #competitive-intel channel that your sales, product, and strategy leads all join.
CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot): Connect your CRM to enable competitive enrichment. When a contact or account is associated with a competitor in Horizonwatch, the briefing context flows into the CRM record. Your sales reps get the latest intelligence on each competitor directly in the deal view.
Email: If your team prefers email delivery, configure the newsletter-style briefing format in Settings. It arrives in each subscriber's inbox in a clean, scannable format.
What happens next
After your first 30 minutes, you've done the substantive setup work. From here:
Week 1: Briefings start arriving daily. Review them and note where the intelligence is most useful. Share the Slack briefing to your team channel.
Week 2: Update competitive profiles with any new context from sales debriefs or product discussions. The more context the AI has, the sharper the synthesis.
Month 1: You'll have a complete picture of what your top competitors have done over the past month -- pricing changes, product updates, hiring signals, customer sentiment shifts. Use it for your next quarterly competitive review and battlecard update.
Ongoing: Horizonwatch runs in the background. The team stays current on the competitive landscape without having to actively manage it. That's the point.
Getting the most out of Horizonwatch
A few principles from teams that use it well:
Don't monitor everything. More signal isn't always better. A focused set of 5-10 competitors with clear monitoring priorities produces more actionable intelligence than 30 competitors with default settings.
Close the loop on competitive deals. When you win or lose a deal where Horizonwatch intelligence was relevant, update the competitive profile with what you learned. This compounds the AI's value over time.
Use alerts for the truly urgent. Daily briefings cover the steady state. Real-time alerts are for events that require immediate action -- a competitor's major pricing change before a key deal, a leadership departure that shifts the competitive landscape.
Share access generously. The teams that get the most value from Horizonwatch have broad internal distribution. Sales, product, strategy, and executive leadership all reading the same briefing creates shared situational awareness that changes how teams make decisions.
Questions? Email us at support@horizonwatch.ai or start a conversation in the product.