1. Market to your SOM, not your TAM

Your longterm play is to be a unicorn that owns the market.

But you can’t market that way.

Start small and focus on the beachhead.

2. The biggest barrier to overcome as a startup is believability

Remember the kid in high school who was a chronic bullshitter?

As a startup, this is you how come across.

The bigger your claims, the more people tune you out.

3. Your message to customers is inverse of your message to investors

Investors want to see how you’ll help countless industries/personas/use cases.

Customers want to believe you’ll still be around in 6 months.

Make your target segment believe you exist only for them.

4. Market your existing features, not your roadmap

Have a cool marketplace you’re planning to add to your point solution?

…but it doesn’t exist today?

Then don’t put it anywhere near your go-to-market assets.

5. Lead with capabilities… not benefits

“10x your revenue” tells me virtually nothing about what you do.

You know what’s better?

“Push a button and get your favorite food delivered to your door.”

6. Share 1st order benefits (not 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.)

So your analytics platform gives me 10x more data points on my customers (1st order)

Which means I can understand them better (2nd order)

Which means I can launch better advertising campaigns (3rd order)

Which means more will sign up (4th order)

Which means I’ll get more revenue? (5th order)

Then tell people you’ll give them 10x more data points — DON’T promise more revenue.

7. Be clear, not clever

A cool sounding tagline that obscures what your product does is useless.

Boring/clear > Exciting/confusing

8. A persona-agnostic message > speaking to multiple personas at once

Try explaining how your product helps a CFO, an engineer, a salesperson, and an HR director

…in one paragraph.

If you can’t pick one persona to talk to, you’re better off just talking about the product.

9. Your positioning is going to be bad—and that’s okay

As a startup, you don’t have the data to make a declaration about your ICP.

You most likely don’t know who your ICP is.

Position poorly… and then position again… and again… until you find PMF.