Positioning 101 for Indie Hackers

April Dunford's Obviously Awesome is the best book on positioning ever written. It's also written for VPs of Marketing at 200-person B2B companies. Here's the same framework rebuilt for a solo founder shipping on a Tuesday.

The 5 components

1. Competitive alternatives

What would your customer use if your product didn't exist? Not "nothing." Real options: a spreadsheet, a competitor, a freelancer, doing it manually. Write the list. Five entries minimum.

2. Unique attributes

What do you have that none of those alternatives have? Be honest. A nicer UI is not an attribute. A real one looks like: "generates copy from a live URL instead of a blank prompt" or "ships finished email sequences, not just snippets."

3. Value

Translate each unique attribute into a customer outcome. Attribute: "generates from live URL." Value: "founder doesn't have to write a brief or fill in fields." Value sentences always start with the customer, never with you.

4. Best-fit customer

Of all the people who might buy this, who cares most about the unique value? Be uncomfortably narrow. "Solo founders launching their first SaaS this month" is a position. "Small businesses" is not.

5. Market category

Pick the shelf you're competing on. Two options:

• Win an existing category — be the obvious choice in a known shelf.
• Invent a new category — give the shelf a name no one else can claim. Most indie products should win an existing category first. Inventing one is a 2-year marketing project.

Putting it together

Write one paragraph with all five components:

For [best-fit customer], the only way to [outcome] today is [alternative] — which is [the pain]. [Your product] is a [market category] that [unique attribute], so customers can [the value]. Read it out loud. If a stranger nods, you have a position. If they squint, keep cutting.

How positioning shows up everywhere

• Hero headline = value + best-fit customer.
• Sub-hero = unique attribute.
• Pricing page = customer + category.
• Cold emails = alternative + pain.
• Investor pitch = all five, in 90 seconds.

When to revisit

Re-run this exercise every six months and every time your conversion rate suddenly drops. Positioning isn't set-and-forget — it's the foundation everything else sits on, and the ground keeps moving.