I had two contrasting experiences about how founders think about their product positioning, recently.
In the first story, a founder who is building a modern UX research tool reached out to me for my thoughts and feedback. They shared the URL and offered to do a demo. As I always prefer it to be, I told them that I would onboard myself just as their customers do and I dislike learning about a product via demos.
When I signed up, I received an email from Supabase but then nothing was working in the product. When I wrote back, they replied—”Yes, we are just about to launch. I was seeking your feedback from the product website, on our message, marketing, and positioning, and if you see the value?”
This is the biggest mistake that founders make. If I cannot use a product because it is ready, how I can share my thoughts or feedback on the product’s marketing?
Positioning is product—it means positioning communicates what the product is, its utility, its value, and its possible impact on the customers’ work or life. However it does not mean that one can review or discuss the positioning without looking at the product.
In fact we should never get into the positioning discussions without looking at the product first.
In the second story, I had a call with another founder who are building a construction workflow tool for SMBs. The have some idea of the product positioning, and the product is under production. However, they have put together a deck which shows a lot of clarity in what they are building—it shows competitors’ analysis, their own value prop, insights from customer interviews, Figma designs (which pretty much gives an idea of product stories and its value), and their core vision and mission.
This makes sense for me to comment on their positioning and the message. Sometimes, the energy and the clarity is in the people and it shows in the conversations, in their deck and documents, and in their framing. I could sense the traces of upcoming product experience in the founder’s clarity about their product.
So, there are no standard templates or frameworks on how it works. If you have just launched something or about to launch it and want my thoughts on product for its onboarding and positioning, write to me anytime.
