Before the deck: the one thing to fix for 2026

This past week, I read April Dunford’s "Obviously Awesome" again.

Not skimming. Actually reading it. Highlighting the parts I swore I already “got.” And once again, it hit me the same way it hit the first time.

This is easily the best thing any founder can do before planning their 2026 roadmap, before rewriting their website, and definitely before walking into investor meetings.

Because positioning is not branding. It’s not vibes. It’s not a clever tagline.

Positioning is the moment someone hears what you do and thinks, “Oh. I know exactly what this is. And I know why I should care.” And if you don’t control that moment, the market will do it for you.

Spoiler: the market is lazy, distracted, and will usually choose the least flattering interpretation.

Most founders think they have a product problem. They’ll say things like: “We’re early, people just don’t get it yet.” “Our product is strong, but the market isn’t ready.” “Investors keep saying they don’t understand our edge.” So they do what any reasonable person would do.

They build more, add features. They expand to new use cases. They tweak the onboarding. They rewrite the pitch deck again. They change the website headline every three weeks like it’s a superstition. But a lot of the time, it’s not a product problem. It’s a positioning problem.

You’re not losing because you’re worse, you’re losing because people don’t know where to put you in their brain. And when they can’t categorize you quickly, they default to “too risky,” “too early,” or my personal favorite: “Interesting… keep us posted.” That’s not feedback. That’s a polite exit.

2026 is going to be noisy. Positioning is how you don’t get ignored. The next wave of startup building is going to look like this: More AI-native products. More “agent” everything. More tools that promise speed, savings, and magic. More founders building genuinely good things. Also more crowded feeds, more crowded investor pipelines, and more crowded categories. Which means attention will be even more expensive.

In a noisy market, the best product doesn’t win, the clearest product wins. That’s what positioning does; It makes clarity a weapon. It tells the world:

• Here is what we are.

• Here is who we are for.

• Here is the context you should judge us in.

• Here is why we are obviously the right choice.

And here’s the underrated part: positioning makes every other decision easier. Your roadmap gets sharper, marketing gets simpler, sales calls get shorter, and even hiring gets more focused. Even your pricing gets less awkward because you’re not pricing a random tool, you’re pricing a known outcome in a known category.

What “Obviously Awesome” gets right that most founders miss, April’s big point, in plain language, is this: Positioning is not what you say. It’s what they understand.

People don’t evaluate your startup in a vacuum, they evaluate you against alternatives.

That’s why “we’re different” is not a strategy. Different from what? In what way? Why should they care?

A founder will say, “We’re an AI platform for customer insights" but all an investor hears is “Another analytics tool.” A buyer hears, “Something I’ll have to integrate, train, and defend internally.” Neither of them is excited yet because neither of them knows where you fit and why you win. Positioning fixes that by forcing you to pick your frame. Not your dream frame. The frame that makes you make sense.

A simple positioning checklist for your 2026 planning

If you do nothing else before you start planning next year, do this exercise.

1. Write down your best-fit customer. Not “startups” or “enterprise.” Be specific. Who gets the fastest value, with the least convincing?

2. Name the real alternatives. Not just competitors. What are they doing instead today? Spreadsheets, agencies, hiring, ignoring the problem, duct-taping tools together.

3. Choose the market category you want to be judged in. This is huge. If you pick the wrong category, you can have the right product and still look weak. Category is the scoreboard.

4. List your differentiated capabilities. What can you do that the alternatives cannot? Be honest. If it’s “better UX,” you’re in trouble. Look for advantages that actually change outcomes.

5. Translate those capabilities into value. Nobody buys “capabilities.” They buy the result. Faster onboarding. Fewer errors. Higher win rates. Lower churn. More compliance confidence.

6. Prove it with one sharp example. A mini story. A result. A before-and-after. A crisp use case that makes the value feel real.

   
   

If you can’t answer these clearly, don’t open Figma. Don’t open PowerPoint. Don’t “just start running ads.” Fix the frame first. Founders sometimes think investors want complexity because they’re “sophisticated", but It’s actually the opposite.

Investors are trying to answer, quickly: What category is this? Is the market big? Is this team credible? Do they have an ICP?

If your positioning is fuzzy, you don’t even make it to the interesting questions. You get filtered out before the meeting, or during the first two minutes of it. And here’s the painful truth: If an investor can’t explain your startup to their partners in one breath, you’re dead in committee. Positioning is not about dumbing it down, It’s about making it transferable.

If you’re planning for 2026, positioning is the groundwork. It’s the thing that makes your plan coherent. It tells you what to build, what to ignore, what to say, who to target, and how to win.

And if you want one high-leverage move, the kind that pays off everywhere, it’s this:

Read Obviously Awesome before you do anything else. Then do the exercises. Not “mentally.” On paper. With your team. With brutal honesty.

Because the founders who win in 2026 won’t be the ones who ship the most.

They’ll be the ones who are easiest to understand and hardest to dismiss.

If you’re planning your 2026 roadmap or thinking about fundraising soon, what’s your category right now? And if you had to say your positioning in one breath, what would you say?