"Positioning clarifies your product’s role and relevance in a category."

"It identifies a space you can legitimately own in your customer’s mind."

"Your idea/product radically disrupts an existing category or an existing way of doing things."

"Positioning work at this stage is less about planting your flag on a category peak and owning it and more about clarifying the choices you are making about your product and GTM strategy."

"Who you choose to be and, more importantly, who you choose not to be."

"The important thing to remember here is to stay flexible to market input and not get too attached to your early positioning."

"If there is one thing to remember at this stage it is this: you are not your customer!"

"Your product could be used for different use cases, but you don’t see broader adoption."

"Your sales team runs into expansion challenges. Or if you are a PLG model, then your marketing efforts to expand fail."

"All these symptoms point to positioning in the wedge. It is, therefore, necessary to take a big step back and return to your original hypothesis, vision, and mission and ask some critical questions:"

"Does your product fully meet the needs of your current persona?"

"How do your current persona’s functional limitations impact your product’s adoption?"

"Your wedge is a entry point to the market. It’s not your market. When you anchor too deeply and for too long in the wedge then you make it your market."

"Remember, positioning happens in the minds of the customer."

"Refocus, rebuild and reposition fast."

"Your product never really had a strong fit, and you scaled your GTM regardless."

"Your product is doing too many things, none too well."

"You got your product right but not the GTM approach."

"This is why it is a good idea to do the hard work of positioning soon after you find fit. If you find that your startup is at this stage, move quickly. Time is your enemy."

"If the problem is your product — Go back to the drawing board. Get back to your customer/prospects and talk to them."

"If the problem is your GTM approach — Is your GTM strategy mapping to your product’s strengths?"

"For example, you are leaning into PLG motion when your product is complex and challenging to self-onboard."

"The marketing team suffers the most because they cannot properly support PLG and top-down sales when you are a small startup."

"Don’t throw money at the problem. Just spending more on demand generation will not solve your growth problem."

"Most early-stage startups need to position the startup first. It’s critical to establish their presence in a category and be seen and heard for their unique perspective."

"If you are an early stage startup, position your startup first even if you have a varied product line. The first step is to do the work for the startup since the products are nested there. The vision, mission, and strategy for the startup sets the stage for the product."