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

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/ https://www.gkogan.co/blog/category-creation/) This First Round article misses two key things: 1) 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. 2) 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.