The Startup Velocity Question: Lack of Understanding of Positioning as a Discipline

I was chatting with an experienced venture capitalist in Silicon Valley about his portfolio’s Positioning challenges. He said, “In a lot of cases, Positioning (and the messaging that follows) is indeed the problem. But a bigger problem behind this is that the founders do not see much value in investing in this area. The founders with technology background tend to value certain aspects of marketing such as lead gen, trade show, etc., but completely underestimate the value of proper positioning. It has been hard for me to get the founders to pay attention to it and spend their time and money on it.”

This problem, unfortunately, is pervasive in the industry.

Featured Videos

Positioning a Generative AI Startup: Erik Severinghaus, Founder and CEO of Bloomfilter (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Great. Let’s kind of role play through this and tell what you pitch to your VCs from a TAM point of view. What is the positioning? What segment are you going after? What use cases are you going after? What is the pricing model? What is the business model or the pricing model? 

Catching Up On Readings: MLSec Market

This report from CB Insights looks at how the machine learning security (MLSec) market is growing as companies deploying generative AI-powered solutions invest in securing their AI applications against threats like sensitive data loss, data poisoning, and prompt injection. Startups in the space raised $213M last year, up from $70M a year ago. For the last two weeks’ posts, click on the paragraph links.

Video FAQs

Positioning a Generative AI Startup: Erik Severinghaus, Founder and CEO of Bloomfilter (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: So, for six-seven years, you stayed in the same company, is that right?

Erik Severinghaus: No, I was at SpringCM. We built that. We got it growing again. We ended up selling that to DocuSign right before the pandemic.

The Startup Velocity Question: Venture Funding Bootstrapped Startups

As you know, I categorically support bootstrapped entrepreneurs.

There are numerous startups now that have achieved $4M-$5M in revenue without any external funding.

However, it has taken time. Sometimes, it has taken 5-7 years to get there.

VCs, however, are looking for velocity.

The Startup Velocity Question: Selling to CFOs under Tightening Budget Conditions

In a tightening market, budgets are under scrutiny.

Positioning a Generative AI Startup: Erik Severinghaus, Founder and CEO of Bloomfilter (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: It’s much more than that. We come up with this issue all the time. I recently published a series called The Startup Velocity Question, and the thesis of it is, ‘why do venture funded startups not achieve velocity?’, which equates to failure basically, because we see that trying to go from zero to a $100M in five to seven years. If you don’t hit velocity, you’re considered a failure. Why? So you may find this series interesting.

The Startup Velocity Question: Large Companies ALSO Have Problems

Many large companies with hundreds of millions in revenues are currently facing slowdown.