What people ask before we start working together, and a few about the craft itself.
Products where the hard part is the technology itself, and where the buyer is often technical: cybersecurity, AI and computer vision, developer tools, fleet and operations platforms.
Practically, it means the work starts with using the product, reading the documentation, and talking to the engineers who built it. Not with repackaging a brief.
Both happen. Sometimes there is a team that needs senior judgment it does not have in-house yet. Sometimes there is no team and the founder has been doing marketing between everything else.
Either way the goal is the same: leave systems behind that the in-house team runs on after the engagement ends, rather than knowledge that leaves when I do.
A project, a quarter, or the long haul — from hands-on execution through to fractional marketing leadership.
Which one it is depends on what is actually in the way, and that is what the intro call is for. Scope gets agreed before anything starts.
I write it. That is the point of the arrangement: the strategy and the technical writing that makes it credible come from the same person, so the positioning and the documentation cannot drift apart.
When volume genuinely needs more hands, I bring in and manage contractors — but the through-line stays mine.
Further than most strategists go: docs-as-code, analytics, product and UX specs, and content structured so that LLMs can read it.
Developer portals, product documentation and release notes are inside the work, not adjacent to it.
As a system, not a shortcut. AI workflows, skill systems, pipelines and automations — evaluated, built or bought, rolled out, and actually adopted — so a small team ships like a larger one.
I also teach it, including to marketers who are wary of it. Judgment about when not to use it is part of the job.
Yes. For marketers and technical writers: breaking in, using AI with judgment, and building systems that get used.
There is no upsell attached to it and no catch.
A positioning document is the strategic logic that sits underneath everything else you say about the product. It defines who you are for, what you do, why it matters, and why you win against the alternatives.
It's not a tagline. It's not a one-liner. It's the reasoning those things are derived from.
Without a positioning document, every team answers the question "what do we do and why should you care?" differently. That inconsistency costs you in every direction: slower sales, confused buyers, harder recruiting, wasted marketing spend, and onboarding that takes months instead of weeks.
A positioning document creates strategic unity, message coherence wherever buyers encounter you, faster execution because the brief is already written, and a clear reason to choose you over the alternatives.
A complete positioning document typically covers:
The depth and format depend on your stage. An early-stage startup needs a different document than a Series B company preparing for a category-defining launch.
The Value Proposition Canvas is a framework for ensuring your product actually fits your customer's needs. It has two sides.
Customer Profile: what jobs your customer is trying to do, what pains they experience, and what gains they're hoping for.
Value Map: what products and services you offer, which pain relievers you provide, and which gain creators you enable.
Fit happens when your value map directly addresses the customer profile. Positioning work is largely the work of finding, articulating, and proving that fit.
In practice: the PMM. In theory it's a cross-functional output that needs sign-off from product, marketing, sales, and leadership. The PMM is the person who runs the process, synthesizes the inputs, writes the document, and maintains it as the company evolves.
At early-stage companies without a PMM, the founder usually owns it by default, which works until it doesn't. The positioning document is often the first thing a founding PMM inherits and the first thing they have to fix.
A positioning document should be a living document, reviewed at minimum annually and revisited any time the market shifts significantly, a major competitor moves, you expand into a new segment, or a product pivot changes what you're actually selling.
If your positioning document was written more than 18 months ago and hasn't been touched, assume it needs work.
Great tech doesn't sell itself.
Let's meet. It's free.
