Positioning Your Startup Is Vital | Hacker News Reader

Positioning Your Startup Is Vital

firstround.com

148 pointsongwu30 comments

The best thing I've read on positioning is April Dunford's "Obviously Awesome"; highly recommend. I read it after seeing her speak at a conference. I think this might be the same talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jRoYh8xL_U

+1 for April. She recommends against a lot of what's in this First-round article, and I think that's wise. This feels like an out-of-date business school primer, which is unusual for FirstRound as their stuff's historically pretty good.

Third this recommendation. I've done a ton a research on positioning for my startup, and even used the the OP article to "position" our startup before I found Obviously Awesome. April's book is hands down the best resource on why positioning matters and actually provides a framework for how to do it with your team.

Is there a good quick summary of her approach?

There you go, written by April herself: https://hackernoon.com/obviously-awesome-a-product-positioni...

4th this recommendation -- I highly recommend April Dunford's "Obviously Awesome".

I really liked obviously awesome, but one thing she cautions against is applying her methodology too early. She says you need to know who your "best customers" are. So if you're too early and don't feel you know who those are (i.e. you don't yet have any customers or you got them just because they're your friends, etc.) then her methods won't necessarily lead you to the right place.

Thank you Bradley-backwards, this was a good talk and first I’d heard of April.

Here's how I define positioning in the context of software companies:

> Positioning is the deliberate effort to make a product or service be associated with a specific category for some advantage. Everything from the way the product is built to the way it’s packaged, priced, sold, and marketed can be a part of that effort.

> For example, Redis makes a database that fits the NoSQL definition, but maybe they prefer not to be associated with “cheap” and “fad,” nor to compete with the many NoSQL solutions in the market. So they consistently label the product as an “in-memory database” and avoid mentionioning NoSQL throughout the corporate or open-source sites. (This is speculation for illustrative purposes.)

(From: https://www.gkogan.co/blog/category-creation/)

This First Round article misses two key things:

Why should founders--already neck-deep in product development, fundraising, hiring, and everything else--spend any time on positioning?

The nearest thing approaching justification in the article is "clarity of thought [in VC meetings]" and informing other branding decisions. That's weak.

The answer: Good positioning attracts and converts more buyers, and increases the perceived value of your product among those buyers. (In other words, faster growth and more revenue.) It also can align and motivate the team, attract job candidates, and yes, excite investors.

Talk to your audience! I can't believe this isn't mentioned in the article.

Filling in blanks to form a sentence is easy. The hard part is determining which combination of words--among thousands of options for any given product--will be most attractive and compelling to your target audience.

Do you position your product as a database or an API? As a managed open-source product or a cloud-native alternative to legacy software? Do you emphasize the speed to deployment or the low latency?

You can't squeeze everything in, so you must either guess, choose one after debating vigorously with your team (and changing it multiple times), or... and I already spoiled the surprise here... talk to your target audience and listen to what they care about most.

It only takes ~10 interviews with customers or prospects to start seeing a clear picture. There is no excuse for not doing it.

Thanks! At work, I'm preparing to develop an internal product. Reading your response helps me think about how I can pitch it and maximize adoption.

Thanks! We've positioned our software Restyaboard as an open-source Trello alternative. Now, we're thinking out loud.

I'm struggling with this for my side gig. So let me try:

For community builders, Who enjoy cultivating engaging forums, https://DiscoFlip.com is a free platform, That provides instant 2 click forum creation. Unlike other places like reddit or fb-groups, DiscoFlip focuses on enabling forum owners to monetize the community for themselves.

How did I do?

Sample size of one: if I create a new sub Reddit or a FB community, it’s unlikely that making money from that community is my goal.

That is a good point. I run couple of subreddits/fb-groups and it always felt a bit off that I couldn't monetize my community the same way I could when forums were distributed. However, these platforms monetize my communities for themselves.

I had to read this a few times to understand what your product is, maybe because I wanted to stop reading halfway through the first sentence. Most people scan and if the first scan is too hard they move on.

I think the first sentence should have shorter, simpler words.

Maybe: “Build an online community in two clicks with DiscoFlip. Easier to configure and monetize than Reddit or Facebook Groups.”

I was using the template as-is from the article. Personally I like the brevity of your version much better. If you don't mind, I would love to use it.

Please do. It would be my honor.

Build the community you want & make the cash you deserve. It only takes 2 clicks with DiscoFlip.com

@riantogo, bruceb has done you a great service here. This description is great and made me understand what your product is. Use it!

+1 Brilliant. Turns out HN crew is good at this. Better than the template in the article.

> How did I do?

Not great, honestly.

----

I read a mis-aligned value prop

* For community builders

* That provides instant 2 click forum creation

For me, community building is something that takes time and effort, but your value prop suggests "quick and easy". I think, community building is something that takes a lot of time, is 2-clicks vs an hour of setup a big deal? Probably not.

I think an alternative angle is making is as easy as possible for people to setup a community for their product. "Get a community for your product in just 2-clicks".

Or, you need to focus on how your product makes community building easier: "A batteries-included community building platform".

You nailed it. This is exactly the struggle in my head. Currently it is "something for everyone" (product forum, community building, revenue channel etc.). I need to narrow it down before expanding. Love the "batteries-included" line.

We're also struggling. If anyone can check our open-source[1] and share similar thoughts, it will be of great help.

[1] https://restya.com/board

> Open source. Trello like kanban board. Tasks, to-dos, chat, etc.

Minor, but don't include "etc"

An alternative format that reads a bit better is the “Laser Focused Positioning Statement”:

I’m a Category that helps Market with Expensive Problem. Unlike my competitors I offer Unique Difference.

For you that could be:

DiscoFlip is a platform for Online Communities struggling to self-monetize. Unlike our competitors, we offer a 2-click solution for starting a new community.

It reads better.

I do agree with other commenters though: your problem doesn’t seem to align with what makes you unique. The more you can orient your marketing around the pain your customer is feeling, the better!

She may have learned that template from someone at Google, but it's definitely Geoffrey Moore's Elevator Pitch template: http://elevatorpitchessentials.com/essays/CrossingTheChasmEl...

Everyone: Go read Crossing the Chasm. Fantastic book.

Positioning is vital and our B2C startup got much better traction once we figured it out. The way we did was testing a lot of slogans and audiences with Facebook ads and seeing what converted and then retained long-term.

Also, I find the template statement to be clunky and not as useful. Both in my current startup, and previous startup - HubSpot - I doubt any employee could recite this contrived positioning statement. And if you can't remember it easily then it's not going to be used much.

At HubSpot our positioning was simple: "All-in-one marketing software". Our target audience was "mid-market", defined as 10-500 employees. That's it and every employee knew that cold and why it mattered.

This model for a position statement can be helpful in very early development. Having a statement early, even before the solution exists or is even fully understood, will be a competitive advantage. Some of the other examples in comments (which are great by the way) require having a better understanding of what you are building.

> In terms of what comes first, product or positioning, Jackson suggests that the two should grow up side-by-side.

Using this as a model gives you a first cut, which you can later refine and shape into something even better.

This is great. I was actually looking for something like this.

Can anyone recommend other content to help Marketing at startups?

This is a good list to start with https://github.com/goabstract/Marketing-for-Engineers

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