Great startup founders are ODD
Great startup founders are ODD
ODD - Opinionated, yet Defensibly Different
Far too often, founders get heads-down building product without understanding the competitive landscape. This is a mistake which affects you in the long term. Understanding category dynamics is essential to win.
What you see is founders at early stages and even after product-market fit play innovation Bingo, just checking boxes, copying, and marketing features without asking:
How is my offering different in the market segment I'm pursuing?
How does my deep tech / cool tech change the category?
How can we differentiate, dominate or disrupt the existing category?
So, now comes the real question ……
How do you win in an established category?
👉 My take is that you need to be ODD.
ODD - Opinionated, yet Defensibly Different
When you are opinionated with a point of view that is defensible you get folks who want to support that opinion.
A strong opinion anchored in your product technology is an asset sometimes even bigger than the product itself.
An asset that you can set in motion - with stories.
Stories that get odds in your favor to win.
Here is the action plan
Be ODD (ODD - Opinionated, yet Defensibly Different) with your product
Segment the market for Early Adopters based on this ODD behavior
Tweak the buying process to your advantage, based on your ODDness.
Arm those beachhead buyers with messaging that reframes status quo assumptions about the problem's solutions. Build product hooks that incent switches in their purchase criteria and processes to your new model. Expand from early niche footholds into the mainstream based on momentum.
In these 3 steps - Be ODD, segmented market, buying process tweaks - you have a powerful framework to transform a category to your vision. The market comes to you rather than the other way around.