Tight positioning is uncomfortable

I’ve written about some of the reasons why addressing positioning in an open source project or in a product can be an emotional process. One of the emotions involved is fear.

That’s because really good positioning is counterintuitive. It requires you to reduce the total size of the market you want to address — at least for the near term — when you’ve just done a bunch of investor presentations playing up your enormous market opportunities.

Good positioning requires you to stick your neck out and be different. I’ve spoken with founders who admit that they’re scared to be different, because if they say the same thing everyone else says in their subcategory, their investors can’t get mad if things go south. But if you are different and things go wrong, it’s obvious that you are to blame.

Tight positioning also requires being bold about your point of view. Not only do you have to clearly explain why your project / product is different, you have to defend the decisions and opinions that led you to create the project. If no one disagrees, you’re not being opinionated enough. That can be intimidating.

So yes, good positioning is uncomfortable. But you know what? So are a lot of things about building a company.