Default to an existing category. Categories are expensive: you are paying to teach a market a new word, and you only earn that back if buyers genuinely have no box for you and a budget line does not exist. Positioning inside a known category means buyers arrive already knowing what you are and searching for it, and you compete on being the best for a specific segment rather than on education. If the category is established, your job is to win a slice of it clearly. If nothing exists, then you have to educate, and you should budget years and a lot of content for it rather than a launch.
4 resources, 1 India-specific, 4 link-checked.
The SuperOps founder frames GTM around one question, is your category established or new, which is exactly the fork in the road for positioning. His channel split of roughly 40% organic, 40% performance and 20% events is a rare concrete answer.
On Prime Venture Partners Podcast by Arvind Parthiban ~50 min
Open primevp.in →Raskin explains why a narrative is a leadership artifact, not a marketing one, and why sales teams tell a bad story when the CEO never gave them a good one. The long form version of the sales deck essay.
On Lenny's Podcast by Lenny Rachitsky 1 hr 15 min
The argument for treating positioning as iterative and cross-functional rather than a one-time launch decision, which is what separates companies that keep it sharp from ones whose story rots. Also the case for reframing a market instead of accepting its boundaries.
From aprildunford.com by April Dunford ~8 min read
The most systematic treatment of recurring revenue as an engineered system rather than a set of departments, with 250+ blueprints you can lift. For leaders building the engine, not for someone still finding the first ten customers.
From Winning by Design by Jacco van der Kooij 556 pages
Open winningbydesign.com →How positioning and messaging reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Understand your customers, our Starting Up track.
