How Well Are You Positioned for AI-Led Growth
A self guided tool for tech founders to assess your current value proposition
Positioning is the backbone of how your company is perceived in the market, and it’s crucial to understand that positioning is not just about branding or marketing. Positioning is a strategic framework that helps define where your company stands, what it offers, and how it differentiates itself from competitors. In today’s fast-paced, AI-driven world, understanding your positioning—and knowing when to reposition—is critical for success.
“How Well Are You Positioned for AI-Led Growth?”
This self guided video course and accompanying worksheet is designed specifically for tech founders to help you assess the strength of your current positioning in the face of AI technologies. It identifies areas where you might need to reposition to stay competitive.
Before we explore what this tool is, how it works, and why taking this assessment could be the key to your company’s future success, let talk why positioning matters.
Why Positioning in AI Matters More Than Ever
AI is transforming industries across the board, but merely adopting AI doesn’t automatically set you apart from competitors. In fact, AI will soon become a baseline capability for many businesses.
The companies that thrive will be those that can position themselves effectively by showcasing how their AI solutions deliver unique, tangible value.
For example, in industries like SaaS, AI-driven features such as predictive analytics or workflow automation are becoming common. To differentiate, your positioning needs to focus on what specific problems your AI solves and how it creates value in a way that competitors can’t replicate.
Many tech founders and companies are already developing products using AI or delivering AI-based services to their clients or at least experimenting with AI platforms, APIs and models.
While your product or service may leverage AI effectively, your company story and positioning might still be lacking. This is critical because building AI-enabled products or services isn’t enough—you also need to clearly position yourself as the company that uses AI to deliver unique value in ways that no one else can.
This is where effective positioning comes into play—ensuring that customers understand not just what your product is, but why it matters and how it delivers value in ways that no other solution does.
The Story Map Framework for Positioning
Based on my operating experience, here is the Story Map Framework that I have built and applied multiple times at tech companies. This framework is applicable to both technology product and tech-enabled service companies. Increasingly AI companies are a blend of both.
The framework creates your company positioning by having you decide answers to three key factors and then helps you synthesize them into a value story that positions you distinctly in the market.
The three factors are:
Hungry Customer: What problem are you solving and for whom?
Magical Product: How does your product offering promise to solve this problem? And how is your way of doing unique?
New Game in Category: What makes your approach and your product better than other competitive alternatives?
You could answer these questions in normal times. However, today these questions have an added urgency:
How is AI changing your assumptions and therefore answers to these questions?
Your fresh answers or commitments should be used to create:
A Unique Value Story (with AI):
What’s the customer story that delivers them differentiated value
Positioning Statement (with AI):
How do you NAME the Promise of your company (product)
How do you CLAIM a Unique Way of delivering in it
How do you FRAME the Category to win against competitive alternatives
Using the Story Map Framework, tech founders can construct a clear, compelling narrative that defines not only what their product does but why it’s different—and better—than anything else on the market. This is crucial when you’re positioning your company in a space like AI, where the technology is fast moving, and the value it brings to customers needs to be reassessed and communicated continually.
Positioning Self-Assessment Tool
The Positioning Self-Assessment Tool—“How Well Are You Positioned for AI-Led Growth?”—is a structured set of questions designed to help tech founders evaluate their current positioning in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
The tool helps you evaluate your current status of the three factors and summarize your current story and positioning.
Customer Factor: How clear are you about your customer personas, and their burning problems? How relevant is AI to your customers today in addressing these problems?
Product Factor: How your product leverage AI in a way that sets it apart from the competition?
Category Factor: How is your current category getting disrupted by AI? And do you have a point of view on it?
Value Story: How effectively can you tell a unique value that your AI-enabled product offers?
Positioning: How sharp are you in naming, claiming and framing your positioning?
Baseline Positioning Score: From all these answers, you are able to generate a score. This score gives you a quick and clear snapshot of your company’s positioning strength relative to competitors, and whether you need to make adjustments to stay ahead.
How the Self-Assessment Tool Helps Tech Founders
The Positioning Self-Assessment Tool doesn’t just give you a score—it provides an evaluation that offers actionable insights into how you can improve your positioning.
Here’s how it helps:
1. Understand Your Current Position: The baseline score helps you quickly understand how well your company is positioned in the market today. You’ll see where you stand compared to competitors and get a clear sense of your positioning’s strengths and weaknesses.
2. Identify Gaps in Your Positioning: The scoring system highlights areas where your positioning may be weak or where competitors might have an edge. For example, if your Value Story isn’t clear, or if your Product Factor is vague, you’ll know exactly where to focus your efforts.
3. Plan for Repositioning: If the assessment shows that your positioning is no longer effective, it helps you begin a path to repositioning, by outlining key steps.
4. Maximize Your Use of AI: The assessment helps you understand how AI can be a competitive advantage, not just table stakes in your roadmap. By focusing on how AI drives value and differentiates your product, you can create a positioning that resonates with customers and sets you apart.
Why You Should Take This Assessment
As AI continues to reshape industries, staying competitive means constantly evaluating and refining your positioning. This self-assessment tool is specifically designed for tech founders who need to adapt to the evolving AI landscape. Here’s why it’s essential:
• Stay Ahead of Competitors: As more companies adopt AI, the marketplace will become more crowded. The companies that succeed will be those that position themselves strategically and communicate their unique value effectively.
• Avoid Positioning Pitfalls: Many companies make the mistake of thinking that simply using AI is enough to differentiate them. This assessment helps you understand that how you use AI is what sets you apart, not just the fact that you’re using it.
• Tailored for Tech Founders: This tool is specifically designed for founders in the tech space. It focuses on the unique challenges of AI adoption and provides insights that are directly relevant to your business.
• Actionable Insights for Improvement: The tool doesn’t just identify gaps—it offers specific, actionable recommendations on how to improve your positioning and strengthen your competitive edge.
Bonus Offer
If you are a tech founder, I am happy to offer 1:1 confidential feedback session to your self assessment. Just complete and submit the worksheet to me at aw@anuragwadehra.com