Competitor Intelligence Firehose

Competitor Intelligence Firehose is an automated competitor monitoring system built for the Web Data UNLOCKED 2026 Hackathon. It monitors four major technology companies (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple) by scraping their public websites and LinkedIn company pages. The project demonstrates real-world business value by calculating Return on Investment (ROI) for automated competitor research. Manual competitor monitoring typically takes 8 hours per week for a business analyst at $75/hour, costing companies $31,200 annually in labor costs. This solution automates that entire process using Bright Data's web infrastructure. The system is configured with a Bright Data API key and $250 in credits, ready to integrate Web Unlocker, Browser API, and Proxy Network products for production-scale deployment. Key features include: - Automatic competitor data collection - Success rate tracking and error handling - JSON report generation for easy integration - ROI calculation showing 5,206% return on investment The architecture is designed to scale from 4 competitors to 100+ by leveraging Bright Data's infrastructure for bypassing CAPTCHAs, rotating IP addresses, and rendering JavaScript-heavy pages. This reduces maintenance overhead from hours per week to zero while providing always-fresh competitor intelligence. Technical implementation uses Python 3 with the requests library, runs on Termux (Android), and is version-controlled on GitHub. The project successfully scrapes 4/4 competitor sites and generates comprehensive JSON reports ready for enterprise analytics pipelines.