🟢 Nobody wants your tech or your product

Let’s be honest: when you're building a startup, it’s natural to fall in love with your product or your tech. You've spent countless hours refining it, maybe even years. So, of course, it becomes the centerpiece of your pitch, your slides, and your story.

Except no one cares but you.

Especially not your future customers, who aren’t buying your tech, but rather what it can do for them.

The 5P disaster

Many startups still default to the classic 5Ps framework: Product, Price, Promotion, Place, and People. It’s a well-known marketing model… but also one that’s built around managing existing products in mature markets, and even worse, commodities. So, yes, if you're selling a product everyone knows about and can only be differentiated from a tsunami of similar ones by a slightly cheaper price, slightly better packaging, slightly brighter colors, or a slightly more accessible spot on supermarket shelves, go with the 5P. This is the poor man's option for marketing.

If you're a startup, why would you do that?

You’re not trying to sell more sugary soda but trying to shift how people think, work, or behave.

Using the 5Ps pushes you into a linear, product-centric mindset when you have nothing else. You start from “what we built” and work your way to “how we explain it.” That’s backwards. As a startup, you need to lead with why it matters, not what it is.