In crowded markets with minimal differentiation between products, positioning is your only path to success. Software is commoditised and AI ain’t making it any less so, so positioning is becoming increasingly important for software products.

But at the beginning it doesn’t matter.

The core problem for all early stage SaaS companies is figuring out what their product actually is and who it’s for. This is more difficult than you think.

When you’re not sure what you are and who you’re for, it’s impossible to know what category you’re in. And so you can’t really position yourself in any meaningful way.

It’s fine to have a positioning hypothesis. If you raised from VCs, you needed one to get them to part with their cash.

But it’s a waste of time to spend much time on this. As soon as the rubber hits the road, it’s going to change. And if not, great, you guessed right!

At the beginning, your sole goal is to validate whether your product solves enough of a pain that a set of customers are willing to pay you for it.

How do you do that?

1. Conduct user and customer interviews. This helps you understand what pain your solution should solve.
2. Craft value props. Your interviews help you define what problem you think you’re solving and who for. Then you write value propositions that clarify how you solve it for them and the benefits they receive from it being solved.
3. Get them in front of potential customers. Now you push them out and see how people react. You either double down or you adjust and repeat steps 1-3.

This maps to what, IMO, are the main marketing skills you need at an early-stage startup:

1. Conducting good interviews. Good interviews are nuanced and surprisingly hard to do without leading the questions.
2. Copywriting. Generating compelling copy is a must, because this forms the basis of all your marketing assets, which you need to spin up and adjust as needed.
3. A generalist understanding of channels. Specialisation isn’t helpful yet because you might need to try a few channels to nail the right one. Being able to whip up a few rough and ready is better than one amazingly executed but mismatched channel.
4. Scrappiness. Because at the beginning, marketing is as much sales and relies on hustle, outreach and talking to people.

Notice, there’s no real specialist knowledge needed here. This is why a good Founder can often replace the need for a marketer at the beginning. A good marketing hire at this stage is a generalist, not a specialist.

That’s why Fractional CMOs and ‘strategy consultants’ are worse than useless at this stage (and really for awhile tbh). Execution and people directly contributing to execution are everything.

Ok, now let’s say your product actually solves a pain. You’ve got some customers. You’ve even got a channel that’s delivering them to you reliably.

Now it’s time to start honing in on your positioning.

How do you do that?

More interviews. Then you can create a new positioning hypothesis. Then you can refine your value props to fit this, and your messaging and other assets can flow from there.

And then, over time, your positioning becomes the most important thing to differentiate you against others and ensure sustained success.