Pick your position

One thing about me, I love football, and so, there I was watching Arsenal again, which is my favorite way to practice patience. And I caught myself thinking about positioning, because football makes it painfully obvious. You can have eleven talented players, a beautiful kit, a stadium that rocks, and still look completely toothless if everyone is occupying the same spaces.

That’s what most startup messaging looks like.

Lots of effort. Lots of movement. No separation.

Positioning is not a tagline. It’s the sentence that makes you choosable. Not “memorable.” Not “clever.” Choosable. Because when a buyer is scanning options, they’re not asking, “Who has the best adjectives> They’re asking, “Who is clearly for me, in my situation, with my constraints, right now?” That is positioning.

Here’s a simple way to think about it. Positioning is like a football role. You don’t win because your manager told the media your striker is “innovative, passionate, and world-class.” You win because your striker consistently shows up in the right channel, at the right moment, against the right defender, and finishes. (I promise, this is not a sub at the current Arsenal #14). Positioning is choosing the channel, deciding where you will be dangerous, and where you will happily not even try.

The sentence that makes you choosable

The fastest test I know is this:

If your competitor could paste your copy onto their site and it still reads true, you’re not positioned.

That’s not a writing problem. It’s a decision problem. It means you haven’t committed to a specific “who,” a specific “when,” and a specific “why you.” You’re still trying to sound generally good and “generally good” is a crowded channel.

So let’s talk about the three positioning lies founders tell themselves, because these are the ones that keep you stuck rewriting decks and homepages until you hate your own product.

3 positioning lies founders tell themselves

Lie #1: “Our product is unique. People will see it once we explain it better.”

Your product might be unique in how it is built, but buyers do not buy architecture diagrams. They buy outcomes. If your promise sounds like every other promise in your category, you are not losing because your deck is ugly. You are losing because the buyer cannot see separation.

In football, being “a great athlete” doesn’t tell the coach where to play you. Are you a pressing winger? A hold-up striker? A ball-playing defender? Are you Martinelli, Havertz, or Saliba?

If you can’t answer that, you don’t have a role. You have potential.

Potential doesn’t get picked.

Lie #2: “We’re for everyone, because our market is huge.”

Big markets are real, but “everyone” messaging creates “no one” clarity. When you try to speak to every possible buyer, you end up using safe, stretchy language that fits any tool. Faster. Easier. Better. Streamlined. AI-powered. That stuff does not travel. It needs you in the room to translate it.

Good positioning does the opposite. It makes your story portable. A buyer should be able to repeat it to a coworker without needing your help.

If you tell a player, “Just go wherever you feel,” you don’t get creativity. You get chaos.

Teams with identity look simple on purpose. They know where they want to attack, and they build everything around getting there.

Lie #3: “Our differentiator is our feature set.”

This is the most common “we’re different because…” trap.

“We’re different because we have AI.”“We’re different because we integrate with more tools.” “We’re different because our dashboard is easier.” That’s not positioning, that’s a feature tour with a motivational speech.

Features matter, but features are not positioning on their own. Positioning lives in comparison. It answers, “Why you instead of the obvious alternative?” Sometimes the alternative is a competitor, but often it is a spreadsheet, an internal hire, doing nothing, or sticking with the current messy workflow because switching feels risky.

If you do not name the alternative you are replacing, you are not positioned. You are just describing yourself.

So what is positioning, in plain English?

It is a clear statement of who you help, when they should care, what you help them achieve, what they would do otherwise, and why your approach wins in that specific situation.

If you want it in one breath, try this structure:

“For [specific people] who are [in a specific situation], we are the [category or approach] that helps them [key outcome], unlike [main alternative], because [your proof-worthy reason].”

If you want a quick self-check, read your homepage and ask: could my best competitor say this too, and would a buyer know when to pick us instead of their current workaround? If the answer is yes to the first and no to the second, you have work to do.

If you want a second set of eyes, I run a Clarity Audit that finds the fuzzy parts and rewrites the “choosable sentence” with you.

Want one?