Your positioning can and probably will change

One of the mistakes that founders make when evaluating their company’s positioning is thinking that they have to come up with the one true positioning for their company that will never change. There are many problems with this, including:

• Every product can be positioned in multiple ways, so there generally isn’t “one” true correct way to positioning the product / company

• If you’re hung up on perfection, you might never actually take action and overlook plenty of perfectly good ways to position the product

Change is inevitable — especially, let’s be honest, in the cloud native ecosystem. Five years ago Kubernetes basically didn’t exist and no one knows if it will continue to exist five years from now. The pain and challenges and needs of people who develop and operate software will change. Your company might grow, making it possible and practical to compete in a larger market then makes sense when you’re a two-person marketing team.

Clear positioning gives your company direction right now, by helping prospects and customers immediately understand what the product does and providing focus to your sales and marketing efforts. You don’t want to change it constantly, but it should be re-evaluated every six to 12 months. It will change — and that’s a good thing. But don’t let that prevent you from improving your positioning now.