Positioning for open source companies
If you’re the founder of an open source company and you’re struggling to differentiate your project and product in the competitive ecosystem and/or you’re not sure how your project and product relate to each other, I can help.
Does any of this sound familiar?
You’re afraid you won’t be able to raise a next funding round because investors don’t believe you have a clear way to translate open source adoption to revenue
You can’t clearly articulate the difference between your project, product and competitive projects
It’s hard to explain what your project and your product do
You struggle to get good quality leads
You not sure what to say when it comes to sales and marketing
What if you could…
Go to your next board meeting with a clear plan for converting more users to paying customers?
Clearly and quickly articulate the difference between your project, your product and your closest competitors, open source or not?
Explain what your project and product does in under 2 minutes?
Create a real flywheel in which your product, engineering, sales, marketing and community efforts are working together to accelerate growth?
Who this is for:
You are the CEO of an open source company, which means you have a critical, strategic relationship with an open source project
You have a commercial product and at least two paying customers
What you get
A workshop for your leadership team, either in-person (over two full days) or virtual (over four half days)
A positioning canvas for your project, your commercial product and your entire company
An updated roadmap for your project and your commercial product
An updated website homepage
An updated project ReadMe
An updated sales narrative
A slide for your next board meeting to explain your positioning strategy + your strategy for the relationship between open source and commercial product
How it works:
Before we work together, I’ll interview a handful of your best-fit customers and best-fit users
During the workshop, I’ll walk the leadership team through a structured series of questions to help us uncover the best way to position your project and your product to make each one’s differentiated value obvious
After we’ve finished the core positioning exercise, we’ll work together to but that positioning into action by updating the project+product roadmaps, the homepage and project ReadMe and sales narrative
What people say:
“When I read some of Emily’s articles about open source on LinkedIn, I was surprised and intrigued at how accurate her perspective was. There are a lot of misconceptions and concepts about open source, but she clearly understands what’s going on, and we think a lot alike.
As a rapidly growing Series A startup, we needed help with our positioning but weren’t sure where to start. Although our marketing had evolved over time, we lacked a well-thought-out strategy.
I knew we needed to approach our positioning thoughtfully and make sure we did everything right because we had a lot riding on this. It made sense to reach out to Emily and mind-meld with someone who could help navigate our positioning process.
Her workshop was unique because we ended up with a positioning canvas, a set of opinions, a point of view, a positioning statement, and a breakdown of how our features meshed into that statement. She walked us through a set of questions, acted as project manager, and helped us reach consensus.
We left with an artifact, surprising new discoveries, and a written distillation of the workshop. Emily did an excellent job of managing the team, making them feel heard, and getting people on the same page. Ultimately, as CEO, I felt like I was able to absorb the final result and make it my own. My team walked away feeling the same way because everything just made sense.
Emily was the first moment where we actually had positioning and a clear point of view. She helped us understand the importance of the language we use to describe our brand, products, and services.
Customers may have a visceral sense of what you do, but they’re going to use the language you give them. If that language is in the wrong category, or is too complex, or doesn’t convey the value your customer will receive, they’ll be communicating convoluted phrases to everyone down the line who needs to hear clear reasons for working with you. This includes their procurement department, their managers, and the person who signs your contract.
With the shift in positioning and language used to describe our products and services, we’ve received a lot more calls from customers who are speaking the same language as we do. This has resulted in an improved conversion rate in terms of demos booked. If you’re looking for someone to help you get your positioning signed, sealed, and delivered, Emily is well worth the investment.”
— Mike McNeil, CEO, Fleet
Check out more testimonials here.
FAQs
We just have an open source project and are pre-revenue. Can we still work with you?
Positioning is really important at this stage, too, but a big part of my work is helping companies get the relationship between their project and their commercial product right. Given that, it’s much more valuable to work with me once you’ve got at least a first iteration of your commercial product and we can validate some of your assumptions with actual paying customers. If you’re at the pre-revenue stage and are struggling with positioning, check out this ebook I wrote about positioning for open source projects. Come back to me once you’ve gotten a couple paying customers.
Should we do this workshop on-site or virtually?
I’m convinced that we have a better experience if we do the workshop in person — and that a positioning exercise is ideally suited to a leadership offsite. But sometimes getting the right people in the same physical space is too challenging and you need to get your positioning fixed sooner than later. I’ve done many workshops virtually and we can definitely get similar results over Zoom. So the bottom line: Do it on-site if possible, but virtual is fine too.
Who needs to participate?
The short answer: Anyone who you think could sabotage the end result needs to be part of the process.
In practice, that usually means all founders as well as the person in charge of marketing, sales, product and customer success, at a minimum.
Could I just do this with my investors?
Your investors have skin in the game in a way that I don’t. On the other hand, your investors don’t spend all day thinking about positioning specifically for open source companies. The interesting thing about this question is that I get a lot of referrals from investors — I think many of them would rather have you work with a consultant like me who specializes in positioning and has experience working on just this one specific problem with a lot of open source companies.
My investor says I need to talk to you. Do I?
It depends. Do you think you have a problem with positioning?
My honest take on this question, which comes up: Your investor is probably right that you have a positioning problem. But there is no point in working with me if you don’t agree that you have a positioning issue and aren’t committed to fixing it.
Should I just have the new marketing person I’m planning to hire do this?
That could work, but you have to remember a couple of things:
Your new marketing person can act as a facilitator for the positioning process, but can not do it in a vacuum. Does your marketing person have experience doing this?
Positioning has deep implications for marketing but also for sales and product development. As the founder / CEO, you need to be bought into your positioning and you need everyone on your team, from engineering to social media intern, on board and aligned on your positioning too.
I really need a long term engagement
Positioning isn’t something that you should mess around with continually. You want to set a positioning strategy, get some feedback and then execute on it.
And anyway, why would you want to spend several months solving a problem that we could fix in a week?