Find the buyer who feels one specific pain more sharply than anyone else and build the whole story around them, even if that shrinks your addressable market on paper. A big player has to serve everybody, so there is always a segment where their generality is a real handicap, and that segment is where you should refuse to lose. Say out loud which customers you are not for, because the willingness to disqualify is what makes the claim believable. Freshdesk did not out feature Zendesk, it picked the SMB that hated the price and the complexity and owned that ground.
5 resources, 2 India-specific, 5 link-checked.
Splits competitors into the hordes, the giants and the ghosts and gives a different move for each. The giants section is the practical answer to being compared to an incumbent on every call.
From The Marketing Meetup by April Dunford 15 min read
Open themarketingmeetup.com →The founder's own account of entering an existing category (help desk) against Zendesk rather than inventing a new one, and winning on price and simplicity for SMBs. The clearest India example of segment choice beating category invention.
From Freshworks by Girish Mathrubootham 9 min read
Kramer's four product types (vertical solution, new way, 10x better, buy versus build) tell you what you are positioning against before you write a word. She is also blunt that most positioning docs are research with no answer at the end.
From MKT1 Newsletter by Emily Kramer 20 min read
Makes the distinction between competitors and competitive alternatives, and points out that the status quo wins roughly one deal in four. That reframe changes which comparison you should actually be fighting.
From aprildunford.com by April Dunford 8 min read
This is the Freshworks story from the founder himself, including how serving the customers Zendesk handled badly became a real business out of Chennai. If your competitor is bigger and better funded, listen to how he chose which fights to pick and which to skip.
On 20VC with Harry Stebbings by Girish Mathrubootham 53 min
How category design reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Brand, web & content, our Starting Up track.
The same ground, over in Find your idea & build the brand, our D2C track.
