Positioning: Winning the Battle For the Developer’s Mind

Geva Perry @Heavybit

Sep 24, 2013

What is Positioning?

The place you want your product to occupy in the customer’s mind

Luxury Cars

• Mercedes: prestige, conservative

• BMW: prestige, (engineering) driving

• Audi: prestige, younger

• Volvo: prestige, safety

Source: PerceptualMaps.com

What is a Positioning Statement?

An internal statement that defines:

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• Product Category

• Target Customer

• Key Differentiator from Closest Competitor

What is a Positioning Statement?

• What is our product (and what it isn’t)

• Who it’s for (and who it’s not for)

• Why it’s better/different than alternatives (and why not)

What is a Positioning Statement?It serves as the guideline for (but is not) your:

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• Tagline

• Messaging

• Go-To-Market Plan

What is Positioning?

• It’s not your company vision

• It’s not your VC pitch

“There are 3 rules to writing a great novel. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they

are.” !

-- W. Somerset Maugham

“There are 6 rules to writing a great positioning statement. Unfortunately, they

contradict each other.” !

-- Geva Perry

The Rules• Highly Differentiated

• Focused

• Simple

!

!

!

• Strong ExistingNeed

• Large Market

• Compelling

Strong Existing Need

Highly Differentiated

Large MarketFocused

CompellingSimple

Category

Target

Differentiator

Strong Existing Need

Highly Differentiated

Large MarketFocused

CompellingSimple

Category

Target

Differentiator

Category

New Category

AWS, Heroku, Twilio, Totango, Takipi, Ravello

Resegment Existing

Category

Salesforce.com, New Relic, Sauce Labs, CircleCI

Existing Category AppDynamics, Garantia Data

Do markets consolidate or fragment over time?

Vendors consolidate !

Categories fragment

Strong Existing Need

Highly Differentiated

Large MarketFocused

CompellingSimple

Category

Target

Differentiator

Err on the Side of Focus

• Product Development

• Marketing & Sales

The VC TrapTotal

Addressable Market Required to

Raise Top-Tier VC Money

Focus Required for Market Entry

Strong Existing Need

Highly Differentiated

Large MarketFocused

CompellingSimple

Category

Target

Differentiator

• If you can’t choose one or two, go back

Differentiator

Positioning Implementation

Messaging

• Features

• Benefits

• Problem Statement

• Differentiators vs. competitor categories

• Value proposition

Value Proposition

• For [target customers]

• Who are dissatisfied with [the current market alternative]

• Our product is [product category]

• That provides [key problem-solving capability]

• Unlike [product alternative]

• We have [key differentiator]

Go-To-Market• Branding

• Marketing Communications (content, tone)

• Lead Gen (SEO, PPC, etc.)

• Conferences

• Sales approach

• Pricing

• Partnerships and channels

• and so on...

Exercise

The CI Market

• Highly fragmented:

• OSS vs. commercial - Jenkins dominates

• No dominant commercial player

• Old school vs. New school

• Developer communities (Java, Ruby, .Net, etc.)

• In flux

• New players rapidly rising but still not clear

Commercial Cloud CI Servers

CI Server Company Cloud/OnPremise

CloudBees Jenkins CloudBees Both

TravisCI Travis Cloud

CircleCI Circle Cloud

Bamboo Atlassian Both

Go (CruiseControl) ThoughtWorks Cloud

Wercker Wercker Cloud

ElectricCommander Electric Cloud Cloud

Semaphore Semaphore Cloud

CodeShip.io CodeShip Cloud

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

!

-- Mike Tyson