Why Most Founders Wait Too Long to Define Positioning

👋 Welcome to this week’s edition of Growth Grid: Building Better Marketing Frameworks!

Hey Founders,

One of the most common challenges I see in early-stage startups isn’t the lack of good ideas, technical expertise, or even funding. It’s something far more subtle — and far more costly over time:

Founders wait too long to define their positioning.

When I started working with startups as a product marketer, I assumed every founder already had a clear, sharp answer to questions like:

• Who exactly is your ideal customer?

• What category are you competing in?

• How are you different and better than your competitors?

• Why should customers believe you?

But time and again, I found teams investing heavily in product development and marketing campaigns while answering these questions with vague, hand-wavy statements like: “We’re for anyone who needs automation,” or “We just need to build awareness first — positioning can come later.”

This mindset is understandable — but it’s also risky. In this piece, I’ll explain why so many founders delay defining positioning, the hidden costs of waiting too long, and what to do instead.

Why Founders Put Off Positioning

In my experience, there are three big reasons why founders deprioritise positioning in the early days:

1️⃣ They’re Too Close to the Product

Founders live and breathe their product. They see its potential in every possible use case, across multiple industries, for all kinds of customers. This breadth of vision is often what makes them great innovators, but it also makes it harder for them to commit to one specific narrative. They fear narrowing down their audience because it feels like leaving money on the table.

2️⃣ They Think Product Comes Before Story

Many founders believe that if we make the product better, people will see its value. They focus on shipping features, polishing the UI, or adding integrations, and assume messaging can “catch up later.” But customers don’t buy features. They buy stories. Without a clear position in the market, even the best product struggles to cut through.

3️⃣ They Mistake Activity for Progress

It’s tempting to pour budget into ads, content, and sales enablement right away, because those feel like immediate progress. But without a clear position, all those activities end up scattered, inconsistent, and far less effective.

The Hidden Costs of Weak Positioning

When founders delay defining their position, it rarely feels like a problem right away. There may even be early wins from network-led sales or word of mouth. But over time, the cracks appear:

• Campaigns generate clicks and leads, but they don’t convert.

• Sales teams struggle to articulate a clear and compelling pitch.

• Prospects confuse you with competitors — or worse, don’t even realise you compete in their category.

• Budgets get wasted chasing audiences that were never a good fit.

Perhaps the biggest cost is internal: teams become misaligned. Marketing tells one story. Sales tells another. Product builds in a third direction. Customers sense the inconsistency, and they don’t trust it.

I’ve seen this happen first-hand. In one company I worked with, we spent months running paid campaigns before realising most of our leads weren’t even in the right segment. Once we clarified our positioning and narrowed our target audience, not only did our lead quality improve, but our close rates and customer satisfaction scores went up as well.

What to Do Instead

The best time to define your positioning is before you scale your go-to-market efforts. The earlier you clarify where you fit in the market and who you’re building for, the more focused and efficient your marketing and sales will be.

Start by answering these questions:

✅ Who is your ideal customer (and just as important, who isn’t)?

✅ What problem are you solving, and how do they describe it?

✅ What category do they expect a solution like yours to fit into?

✅ How are you uniquely different from the alternatives?

✅ Why should they trust your claims?

Once you’ve defined this, build a simple messaging framework that aligns your entire team around the same story. Ensure that your website, campaigns, sales conversations, and even product roadmap reflect this position consistently.

Final Thoughts

Positioning isn’t something you tack on later. It’s the foundation of your go-to-market strategy — and it shapes everything from your product roadmap to your brand identity.

As a founder, defining your position may feel risky at first, like you’re leaving opportunities behind. But in reality, it’s the opposite: positioning helps you focus your limited resources where they’ll have the most impact, resonate more deeply with your audience, and win more effectively in your chosen space.

If you’re a founder or a team struggling to articulate your positioning — or wondering how to align your messaging across teams — I’d love to help.