Here's the deck I shared at a Webinar on startup positioning with portfolio companies at Defy.vc. Thanks to Trae Vassalo for the invitation and to David Tal, co-CEO Verse.io for sharing his perspectives.

1. Positioning & Messaging
for Startups
~ Andy Getsey
At Defy.vc, Dec 17, 2020www.getseyhannon.com

2. Today’s discussion
What positioning is
What messaging is
Examples in the wild
An approach
Q & AWhat’s at stake

3. Positioning
Positioning is "the place a brand occupies in the mind of its target
audience".
- Wikipedia

4. Positioning
● David Ogilvy said “what a product does and who it’s for”
● Ries and Trout grew it to include reputation and ranking among competitors
● Schaefer and Kuehlwein extended it to include a brand's mission or myth
- Wikipedia

5. Messaging
Messaging is a set of specific statements used to support a company’s
positioning, and communicate important information about the company and
its activities to customers, employees, investors, partners and other
stakeholders.
- Wikipedia

6. $ millions to $ billions are at stake
When your positioning and messaging are right, lots of things are easier
—fundraising, marketing, sales, recruiting, bus dev, etc.
When positioning and messaging are off, everything is harder than it should be
~ Me

7. You’ve got 8 seconds
In 2000, Microsoft conducted a study measuring how long people can focus on one thing
for a specific amount of time. The results showed the average person's attention span
was 12 seconds.
Today, it’s 8.

8. A reductive exercise
● Convey only the information that customers will find most interesting and
valuable, in the shortest amount of time & space possible.
● What you leave out is as important as what you put in
> It’s way harder than it sounds, at first

9. Classics

13. Startups in the wild

16. $207MRaised
$860MValuation

19. $33MRaised
$260MValuation

22. $184MRaised
$500MValuation

25. $12MRaised
$50MValuation

26. Our approach to
positioning

27. 10 steps
1. Create a small, cross-functional team to collaborate on input, participation and feedback
2. Define which customers care about you the most and why
3. Zero in on the biggest problem you solve
4. Agree upon what you do, and what you don’t do
5. Understand who you compete with, and who you don’t
6. Research related categories and sub-categories - for your company and leading competitors
7. Decide your category
8. Define how you’re different
9. Draft your positioning statement
10. Test it out on privately with employees, advisors, investors
> More detail here on positioning and messaging, with a research framework and a messaging model.

28. Collaborative teamwork is magic for this
● Complete input
● Diverse perspective
● Faster work
● Stronger buy-in

29. Your best customers
● Feel the pain most
● Want a solution most
● Close faster
● Pay more
● (And they’ll tell you why they bought)
> Best customer focus helps you sharpen thinking & language. All viable customers will still get it.

30. Focus on being different, and change
● Being different is interesting in ways that being incrementally better isn’t
● Customers with problems are interested in change
● And it cuts through the noise

31. Drafting positioning statement
● Narrow, focused set of thoughts
● Places your company in the right spot on a mind map
> Not necessarily marketing words. But could be

34. $33MRaised
$???Valuation

37. $36MRaised
$???Valuation

40. $19MRaised
$???Valuation

43. $21MRaised
$???Valuation

44. Our approach to
messaging

45. 5 steps
1. Get the right people involved. Collaborative, cross-functional project team
2. Work with an organized message framework
3. 3-4 Collaborative messaging workshop sessions
4. Create answers for the standard questions everyone asks startups
5. Create good messages
> More here on positioning & messaging, a research framework, a messaging model and how to run messaging workshops

46. Our
messaging
framework
> More detail here

47. How to create good messages
● You have 8 seconds…
● You first targets are home page scroll and pitch deck
● So keep messages brutally short
● Aim for high clarity, land meaning fast
● Start with the conclusion, don’t build up to it
● Then supporting points, as few as possible
● In the first draft, just get into the ballpark
● Once you have clear messages, then iterate and wordsmith

50. $135M
Raised
$135-500M
Valuation

55. $298M
Raised
$???
Valuation

58. $290M
Raised
$1.75B
Valuation

59. About Andy Getsey

60. About
Andy Getsey
Andy Getsey is a partner at Getsey|Hannon, a consulting firm
focused on positioning and messaging, and managing partner of
Theorem Ventures, a seed/angel fund founded in 2007.
Andy and GH partner James Hannon have worked on
positioning and messaging with 150+ tech companies, including
more than 80 startups that were acquired or went public. Andy &
James were co-founders and senior positioning & messaging
strategists at Atomic PR, 2010 North American Tech PR Agency
of the Year, which was fully acquired by Huntsworth plc in 2014.
andy@getseyhannon.com

61. Thanks for your time
At Defy.vc, Dec 17, 2020www.getseyhannon.comGetsey | Hannon