After working with 350+ startups, we’ve discovered 3 ways to solve for strong positioning.

(using the Fletch framework)

The different approaches are dictated by how much insight the founders have into their product, their market, and their competitors.

In other words, we adapt the approach based on how much they know.

Here are the founder positioning types:

1️⃣ Customer-Focused

These founders are dead set on trying to help a specific group of people.

(often in a specific industry)

They’ve usually been in the role of their customers and have deep insight into the struggles these customers face.

How we approach positioning with these founders:

📍 Start with the target audience

We map out all the workflows (use cases) of this audience, followed by the competitive alternatives (ie how these workflows are currently being carries out)…

…then we layer on differentiated arguments to see where the strongest positioning would be.

2️⃣ Technology-Focused

These founders are dead set on applying the latest technology breakthrough.

(did someone say “AI”?)

Unlike customer-focused founders, this group doesn’t have a strong conviction on who the target market should be.

They see endless market applications for what they’ve built and often envision that everyone will eventually use their product.

To be clear, it’s not that these founders don’t care about their customers.

It’s just that their main focus is on pushing the technology as far as it will go.

How we approach positioning with these founders:

📍 Start with their unique product capabilities

We list the most compelling functions of the tech-enabled product, and then work backwards to spotlight competitive alternatives that are significantly weaker.

Finally, we map out who is using these competitive alternatives to see where the strongest differentiation exists.

3️⃣ Competition-Focused

These founders are dead set on disrupting a specific market category.

They’ve usually had direct experience with the products in the category and have specific knowledge of their limitations.

This group is similar to customer-focused but lacks specific industry domain expertise.

How we approach positioning with these founders:

📍 Start with the competitive alternatives

We list out all the products they might replace or augment, and work backwards to identify audiences that hate these products the most, and would care about the new capabilities of the startup.

———

Positioning is messy.

So while we take a step-by-step approach in our framework and process, it’s important to understand that different situations require slightly different approaches.

This is where the art of positioning (and understanding the common patterns) becomes really important.