Positioning – the critical step on the way to growth
Before growth, there are a few decisions that shape everything: who you build for, what you prioritise in your product and services, and why customers should choose you over alternatives.
Most startup teams delay making these decisions.
That’s the curse of knowledge and the curse of passion: you understand the infinite possibilities of your technology, and care deeply about what you’re building. It makes every path look tempting. You can build this for one audience, or another. Solve one problem, or several. Go in multiple directions at once.
But everything for everyone leads nowhere. Without an anchor, startups drift. Priorities shift. Decisions become reactive. And while we all understand the incredible power of being agile, you still need criteria to guide you – when testing, when interpreting feedback, and when deciding whether to pivot or adjust. This is what positioning provides
Positioning is the perception you want customers to have about your product, that would make them prefer you over alternatives. It emerges at the intersection of what customers want, competitors don’t offer, and you can deliver. This intersection defines your differentiated value. Positioning builds on it by adding choices about the market you play in and your winning bets (unique capabilities or offerings that ensure winning in that market). It is a set of decisions, not a slogan, nor a tagline.
Once defined, its purpose is to keep the team aligned. It guides the execution of your marketing strategy in all its aspects – product, communication, pricing, distribution.
A clear positioning gives you criteria to make these choices consciously:
- which customer segment to target
- what to prioritise when building features or adding services
- how to explain the value of what you’re building
In the market, when you don’t consistently signal how you want to be perceived, customers will position you themselves. Often, competitors will position you too.
Internally, the absence of positioning shows up in familiar ways: trying to appeal to everyone, focusing on features without explaining their value, panicking over competitor features, copying them or over-claiming differentiation.
Positioning is one of the fundamentals of strategy. But it’s not abstract work; it can be approached in a simple, practical way.
That’s what we’ll focus on in the Positioning for Early Stage Startups Workshop: how to think about positioning and how to work on it with your team.
We’ll use a simple structure, built around a few essential questions: Who are you really building for?
What alternatives are customers comparing you to?
What are you truly good at right now?
By the end of the workshop, you will have:
- a clear mental model for thinking about positioning
- simple frameworks to guide the thinking process
- the ability to gather your team and work on positioning right away, with structure and direction.
Stay tuned for details
Heraldist for K2Match, 2026