5 reasons why startups struggle to explain their product

↳ And where it shows up in their messaging 👀

1️⃣ They’re too close to the product.

⚰️ We call this “the curse of knowledge”.

They’ve spent so much time going deep into the problem space and solving for nuanced technical challenges…

🤮 That they end up over-explaining everything.

2️⃣ The product & customer constantly changes.

Finding product-market fit is like trying to build a skyscraper on shifting ground.

🌀 The product's always changing

🌀 The target customer's always changing

And when everything is in flux...

💢 The messaging ends up being all over the place.

3️⃣ They’re building a platform that does many things.

As the number of features goes up…

📈 So does the number of messages.

But therein lies the rub — you only have so much space & time to communicate the value of your product to a prospect.

↳ And you won’t be able to talk about everything.

4️⃣ They refuse to give up on their favorite features

No one likes to admit that their ideas aren’t working.

And rather than removing them from the product and building new features…

👎 They try to keep them alive by over-messaging on 2nd-Order benefits.

5️⃣ They’ve raised money with a story on the future.

This is a trap.

The message your VC's love…

(Big TAM, lots of use cases, growing markets)

❌  Is not the message your customers care about.

This leads to a big message misalignment.

_______

So if you're an early stage startup struggling to explain your product...

Be aware of these common mistakes and remember...

🔮 You can't fix your messaging problems if you don't know what's causing them.