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you are a startup, the only market analysis you need are sales. overtime update your business plan with things you find on the web, and compare them to your sales figures.

the only customers you should trust are the ones willing to actually pay you for your product.

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I would have to agree. What you want is market exploration: who is your customer. Start talking to them. Ask their opinion of what's missing from current solutions. Don't try and chase existing players, talk to dissatisfied customers and folks who should be customers but aren't--find out why. If you chase the existing players you end up with a large feature set and the need for a large development effort that looks more superset than distinct. Think about features you can delete from existing solutions and still appeal to a segment of users. Think about one or two missing features you can add after you have deleted many of the existing ones. A really good book on this is "Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank, cheapest place to buy it is here http://www.cafepress.com/kandsranch

"Four Steps to the Epiphany" is a must-read. Also, get "Bootstrapping" from Greg Gianforte.

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