Porter's Five Forces Template (Copy + Example)
A Porter's Five Forces template turns industry analysis into a scorecard: for each of Michael Porter's five forces, it pairs prompting questions with a High/Medium/Low rating and a one-line evidence note. Fill it in and you get a defensible verdict on a market's profitability — not five vague paragraphs.
Quick Answer: Copy the five-row table below. For each force — rivalry, new entrants, substitutes, supplier power, buyer power — answer the prompting questions, rate it High/Med/Low, and jot the evidence. The strongest force, not the average, is your verdict.
Most five forces analyses fail the same way: they become five essays nobody scores, and the "so what" never arrives. A template fixes that by forcing a rating and a reason for each force.
This is the scorecard version — built for a first pass you can finish in an afternoon and defend in a room. For the reasoning behind each force, keep the complete guide to Porter's Five Forces for startups open alongside it.
The Porter's Five Forces Template: Five Forces With Scoring Prompts
Here is the template. Copy the table, replace the example notes with your own evidence, and rate each force High, Medium, or Low. The prompting questions do the work — they push each score toward a structural reason instead of a gut feeling.
| Force (Porter) | Prompting questions | Your rating | Example note (hypothetical) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Competitive rivalry | How many direct competitors serve this exact buyer, and how alike are they? Is the market growing, or do gains come only from taking share? Does competition collapse to price? | High / Med / Low | e.g., "Many near-identical tools; competes mostly on price" |
| Threat of new entrants | What capital, proprietary tech, or regulation blocks a newcomer? Are there network effects or brand loyalty to overcome? How fast could ten teams copy you? | High / Med / Low | e.g., "No moat; a capable team could rebuild the core quickly" |
| Threat of substitutes | What does the buyer use today — a spreadsheet, a manual process, nothing? How much better is yours? Does a "good enough" free option cap your price? | High / Med / Low | e.g., "Spreadsheets solve it 'well enough' for many buyers" |
| Supplier power (bargaining power of suppliers) | Which critical inputs do you depend on (cloud, APIs, payment rails, platforms, scarce talent)? How interchangeable are they? Could one raise prices or cut you off? | High / Med / Low | e.g., "One dominant API provider sets terms and pricing" |
| Buyer power (bargaining power of buyers) | Are buyers concentrated or fragmented? How low are early switching costs? Can buyers comparison-shop, or build it themselves? | High / Med / Low | e.g., "A few large accounts with low switching costs early" |
Takeaway: The template's job is to convert opinion into an argument — a rating you can defend with one concrete example per force. If you can't name the evidence, the score is a guess wearing a grade.
Field-by-Field: What Each Prompting Question Tests
Each prompting question tests one structural driver Porter identified in Competitive Strategy — not a feeling about the market. Here is what each block is really probing.
Competitive rivalry — the force you'll overweight. Rivalry is the pressure you can see, so you tend to over-index on it. The prompts push you past "who's here?" to "what will these players do when I take their first hundred customers?" Mapping the field properly is a structured competitor-analysis playbook in its own right.
Threat of new entrants — the door you came through. Low barriers are what let you in; the same open door lets the next ten teams in behind you. The prompts ask whether you can raise a barrier as you grow, rather than relying on the absence of one.
Threat of substitutes — the force that hides. Substitutes never appear in a competitor list, which is why they're the most under-counted force. The prompts make you name the workaround — often a spreadsheet, a manual process, or simply doing nothing — and ask whether it's "good enough" to cap your price.
Supplier power — real even for software. Cloud infrastructure, third-party APIs, payment rails, app-store platforms, and scarce talent are all suppliers. The prompts separate interchangeable inputs (low power) from chokepoints where one provider can raise your costs or cut you off (high power).
Buyer power — deceptively high early. With no track record and few integrations, customers can leave the day something cheaper appears. The prompts ask how fast you accumulate switching costs — stored history, embedded workflows, habit — that shift leverage back to you.
To move from a blank template to a scored one force by force, follow the step-by-step process for applying the five forces to a startup.
A Filled Five Forces Example: AI Meeting-Notes Tool (Hypothetical)
Here is the template filled for a hypothetical venture: an AI meeting-notes assistant for enterprise sales teams. The scores are qualitative reasoning — no market numbers — to show how the pattern reads once the notes are in place.
| Force | Score | Why (hypothetical) |
|---|---|---|
| Competitive rivalry | High | A crowded category; many near-identical note-takers already chase the same buyer |
| Threat of new entrants | High | No proprietary moat — foundation-model APIs let a small team ship a competitor fast |
| Threat of substitutes | High | A human taking notes, the CRM's built-in fields, or doing nothing are all "good enough" for many teams |
| Supplier power | Medium–High | The product rides on a few foundation-model API providers who set pricing and terms |
| Buyer power | Medium | Sales teams are price-aware with low early switching costs, though notes get sticky once embedded in the workflow |
Read the pattern, not the average. Four forces lean High, and the standout is supplier power: the venture's economics ride on a handful of model providers who could change pricing or terms overnight. That single force — not an averaged grade — is the strategy question, and averaging the five would bury it.
The template also shows the escape route. To make this workable you'd have to bend a force: build a proprietary data asset that weakens new entrants, or go deep enough into one sales workflow that the CRM and "nothing" stop being real substitutes. If you can't name the force you intend to change, the structure wins — and the template told you so before you built anything.
Structure tells you whether a market can be profitable; it can't tell you whether buyers want your specific product. Pair the scorecard with demand-side evidence a platform like Edmired helps you organize before you commit budget.
Adapting the Template for B2B, Marketplaces, and Hardware
The five forces are universal, but the prompts that matter most shift by business model. Adjust the questions — not the framework — for your context.
- B2B and enterprise: Buyer power concentrates fast, so weight those prompts heavily — a few large accounts can dominate revenue and dictate terms. The upside is that procurement, security reviews, and switching costs raise entry barriers in your favor once you're inside an account.
- Marketplaces and platforms: Score buyer and supplier power on both sides, since you serve two customer groups at once. Add one prompt the standard template omits: can either side disintermediate you by transacting off-platform? Network effects are your main defense against new entrants.
- Hardware and physical products: Supplier power turns literal — component suppliers, contract manufacturers, and distributors can squeeze margins, and switching them is slow and costly. Capital intensity also lowers the threat of new entrants relative to software, tilting one force in your favor.
Key Takeaways
- A Porter's Five Forces template is a scorecard, not an essay. Each force gets prompting questions, a High/Med/Low rating, and a one-line evidence note — built from Michael Porter's model in Competitive Strategy.
- The five forces are competitive rivalry, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, supplier power, and buyer power. Rivalry with direct competitors is only one of five pressures on your margins.
- Rate each force against evidence, not gut feel. A score you can't defend with one concrete example — a named substitute, a real supplier concentration — is a guess wearing a grade.
- Score the force as it will be after you enter, not as it looks today. An empty market with low barriers is a High new-entrant force in disguise.
- Read the pattern, not the average. The single strongest force is the binding constraint that caps your margins and defines your strategy.
- Adapt the prompts, not the framework. B2B weights buyer power, marketplaces score both sides, and hardware makes supplier power literal.
- The template reads structure, not demand. Pair a hostile or attractive verdict with real customer evidence before committing budget.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a Porter's Five Forces template include?
A usable template includes all five forces — competitive rivalry, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, supplier power, and buyer power — plus three columns: prompting questions that test each force, a High/Medium/Low rating, and a one-line evidence note. The note matters most: it turns each score into an argument you can defend and revisit later.
How do you fill in a five forces template?
Work one force at a time. Answer the prompting questions using evidence you already have — named competitors, real substitutes, actual supplier concentration — then rate the force High, Medium, or Low and write a one-line reason. Score each force as it will be after you enter the market, not as it looks today. A first useful pass takes an afternoon.
Is a Porter's Five Forces template the same as a SWOT template?
No. A Five Forces template analyzes the industry you're entering — external, structural pressures that set profitability for every player. A SWOT template analyzes one company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Five Forces judges whether a market is attractive; SWOT judges how well a specific company is positioned inside it. They answer different questions.