Positioning is usually taught as a game of contrast: find the category, find the leader, and stake out the corner they've left open. It's good advice — right up until you're building something that doesn't fit a category yet. Then the familiar moves stop working, and founders reach for one of two bad options: they either jam themselves into an adjacent category that quietly undersells them, or they describe their product so abstractly that nobody knows what it is.

There's a third path. Here are five principles we use with first-mover clients to turn an undefined market into an advantage.

1. Anchor to the problem, not the category

If buyers don't have a name for your category, they definitely have a name for their pain. Lead with the problem in language they already use. "The spreadsheet your finance team rebuilds every quarter" lands harder than "an autonomous financial planning platform." Specificity in the problem buys you permission to be novel in the solution.

People will forgive an unfamiliar solution if they instantly recognize the problem it solves.

2. Borrow a mental model, then break it

Net-new things are understood by analogy first. "It's like Figma, but for data pipelines" gives a buyer a shape to hold. The trick is to borrow the model only to get in the door — then immediately show the one way you're different that matters. Analogy for comprehension, contrast for memory.

3. Pick the fight you can win

Even without a competitor, you have an enemy: the status quo. The manual process, the duct-taped tools, the resignation that "this is just how it works." Name that enemy clearly. A villain gives your story tension and gives buyers a reason to act now rather than later.

4. Decide whether to name the category at all

Coining a category term is expensive — you're now responsible for teaching the market what it means. Do it only when (a) the new behavior is genuinely different from anything that has a name, and (b) you have the reach to repeat the term until it sticks. If you can't commit to saying it a thousand times, don't coin it. Borrow an existing term and earn the right to redefine it later.

5. Position for the believer, not the average

Early on, you don't need the market — you need the first hundred people who feel the problem most acutely. Sharpen your message for that believer even if it alienates the cautious majority. Broad, safe positioning is what you grow into, not what you launch with. A message that excites a few beats a message that mildly interests everyone.

Putting it together

Position before the category exists by being concrete where buyers are anxious — the problem, the enemy, the believer — and disciplined about where you ask them to stretch. Ambiguity isn't your weakness here; it's open space. The teams who win it are the ones confident enough to define the terms before anyone else thinks to.

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Working on something the market doesn't have words for yet? That's exactly the kind of problem we like. Start a conversation →