How do you know if your startup has a positioning problem?
Key symptoms that don't announce themselves and how to recognize them.
There are too many things that keep early-stage founders up at night: fundraising, hiring the right talent, building the early version of your product, finding real users who give you real feedback, iterating to make sure you are building something essential, and wait…did someone run payroll and order coffee beans?
Yep. I know the list is long. But often, founders don’t recognize they have a positioning problem until they are too far along in their founding journey. Why?
Because a positioning problem does not announce itself clearly and directly, like a broken feature or a user who churns. The positioning problem hides under the skin of your startup, showing symptoms that defy easy diagnosis, misleading you to address those symptoms instead of the root cause.
Here are a few symptoms that I’ve seen after helping many early-stage startups with their positioning.
The problem of talking about the problem
When I begin working with a founding team on their positioning, I interview all the key …
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