When you’re a small fish in a big pond, the instinct is to copy the big fish.
This may mean matching their features, mirroring their language, and competing on their terms.
That instinct is wrong though, startups don’t beat giants by being cheaper or faster versions of them.
They win by being different and sharper. They spot the blind spots and go where the incumbents can’t or won’t.
In this post, we’ll show you how to avoid the trap of category mimicry, identify and exploit positioning gaps, and to craft a story that sticks.
This is about clarity, not complexity, and it starts with one uncomfortable truth: if your pitch sounds like theirs, you're invisible.
Big companies want you to believe that size equals legitimacy. That market share is a proxy for quality.
Category leaders can be slow, burdened by legacy code, bloated messaging, and less agile thinking.
That’s your advantage.
Instead of trying to compete on scale, ask yourself:
Where are they weak, slow, or silent?
Don’t echo their value proposition, try and undermine it.
Most early-stage messaging is a mess of buzzwords such as scalable, innovative, cloud-native. It sounds like everyone else.
What you need is a strategic wedge.
A wedge is your way into the market. It’s the narrow, sharp slice of the problem that you solve better than anyone else. It gives you permission to expand later, but traction in the short-term.
Your wedge should be:
You don’t need to be all things to all people. You need to be the right thing for the right people.
Category leaders play it safe but you can’t afford to. As a startup, you don’t have a decades-old brand to fall back on.
You do have the advantage of focus though.
While bigger rivals are busy building roadmaps for five personas and ten verticals, you get to speak directly to one kind of person with one kind of problem.
Startups punch above their weight by telling sharper, spikier stories.
Here’s how:
“People don’t remember features. They remember feelings. If your story makes someone feel like you ‘get’ them, that’s when they trust you.” - positioning expert April Dunford
Build a story around a mission, not a menu of features. If it wouldn’t fire someone up in a pitch deck, rewrite it.
Here’s a common trap: early-stage startups try to look bigger than they are. Corporate language. Big logos. Over-designed websites.
It can backfire as customers don’t want another faceless tech company. They want to know:
Your small size is your superpower, and here’s how you can use it:
“Startups should act like insurgents, not incumbents. Use speed and focus to do what the giants can’t.” - Ben Horowitz
Let’s look at how some breakout startups found their wedge and won:
Crowded space. Project management (vs. Asana, Jira)
Wedge. Fast, opinionated workflows for modern software teams
Message. ‘The issue tracking tool you'll enjoy using.’
Edge. No fluff. Optimised UX. Built for velocity.
Crowded space. Meeting tools (vs. Zoom, Otter, Notion)
Wedge. Automatic, high-quality meeting summaries
Message. ‘Never take notes again.’
Edge. Speed, value, and a free model
Crowded space. Scheduling (vs Calendly)
Wedge. Scheduling links that feel personal and respectful
Message. ‘A scheduling tool both the sender and recipient will love.’
Edge. UX-first, solo founder with a strong personal brand.
These startups didn’t outspend the big names, they outpositioned them. Their message was clear, opinionated, and customer-obsessed.
Every category has a blind spot. Your job is to see it, own it, and hammer it home.
If you remember just five things.
Want to sharpen your startup’s positioning? Run a category teardown with your founding team. List out:
Then distil it into a single, pointed sentence. For
example: ‘We’re the only hiring platform that removes interviews entirely for fast-growing tech startups.’