April Dunford

April Dunford has led teams at seven successful B2B startups (six acquired), worked with over 200 companies on positioning, and is the bestselling author of Obviously Awesome -- widely considered the definitive book on product positioning. Her guest post on Lenny's newsletter remains one of the most popular posts of all time. Their core argument: Position brilliantly in an existing category first -- most companies have positioning problems, not category problems. Category creation is expensive, risky, and usually unnecessary. The evidence is specific: Dunford's own career: repositioned a failed 'Microsoft Access killer' (200 copies sold) as an 'embeddable SQL database' -- same product, different positioning, massive success. Furthermore, cRM positioning example: telling someone your product is 'CRM' triggers assumptions about competing with Salesforce, features like deal tracking, and price expectations -- good positioning leverages these assumptions, bad positioning fights them. Trap 3 from her newsletter: the common mistake of assuming you need a new category to grow, when in fact better positioning in an existing one would produce faster results at lower cost. In April Dunford's own words: "Positioning defines how your product is the best in the world, delivering some value that a well-defined set of companies care a lot about." (Defining positioning succinctly in her conversation with Lenny.)