Positioning for tech companies. Author of the best-selling books Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch.

April Dunford is the world's foremost authority on product positioning for B2B technology companies. As a consultant, April helps companies make complex products easy to understand and love. After a 25-year career as a VP of Marketing at various fast-growing technology firms, she has consulted with 300 technology companies, including Google, Epic Games, Postman, and others. April is the acclaimed author of the best-selling book, "Obviously Awesome," which delves into the art of positioning, and the newly released, "Sales Pitch," which unveils the secrets to crafting a winning sales narrative in the market.

April Dunford

I'm doing an AMA with the folks from Business of Software. I'm going to cover some of the new stuff from the second edition of Obviously Awesome. Join us!

View company: Business of Software Conference

Positioning is one of those things everyone thinks they understand… Until they actually have to do it.

That’s why we’re hosting a live AMA with April Dunford at Business of Software.

This isn’t a talk or a book recap. It’s a chance to ask April real, specific questions about applying positioning to your company, the messy edge cases, the trade-offs, the “this sounded easy until we tried it” moments.

If you’ve read April’s book (or are halfway through it with sticky notes everywhere), this AMA is for you.

Join us on Feb 18: https://lnkd.in/gKTzUt7a

April Dunford, Mark Littlewood and 5 other connections attending

View event: BoS Online AMA on Positioning: April Dunford

BoS Online AMA on Positioning: April Dunford

Dharmesh Shah

Founder and CTO at HubSpot. Helping millions grow better.

Career startup guy.

Author of the book &quot;Inbound Marketing&quot; (http://InboundBook.com)

Specialties: Entrepreneurship, Software Development, internet marketing,SEO

Founder and CTO

Founder of HubSpot, a venture-backed software startup.  HubSpot offers the industry's first inbound marketing system for small businesses.  The software is available as a hosted service (SaaS).

This might be the SCARIEST and/or CRAZIEST thing I've done in years.

But, here we go...

Even before PLG (Product Led Growth) there is usually Founder Led Growth.

I've long believed that *everyone* in an early-stage startup should be selling the product and helping customers get value. Even if you've never done sales. *Especially* if you've never done sales.  

But, there's no reason to limit this to just the early days of a startup.

So, in the spirit of curiosity, learning and love, I'm trying something new.

I'm going to jump back into "early-stage" mode and help sell HubSpot. Not just sell the vision of HubSpot (which I do all the time), but sell the actual product/platform that we provide to customers.

HubSpot is 20 years old and has 280,000+ customers. Why would I do this? 

Simple, because:  I LOVE HUBSPOT! 

And, I want to share my love with as many other founders and founding teams as I can. 

Also because I'm competitive and love a challenge.  

I'm going to track it all and see how many people I can get to sign-up for HubSpot Free or Starter edition. 

I've got a ton of ideas I want to try that I think will help drive sign-ups. 

As part of this effort, I'll be creating a series of "founder to founder" videos. Some ideas I have:

1) A "speed-run" of signing up for HubSpot and getting your first contact in there and starting to use it.

2) A demo/screencast of how I *personally* use HubSpot for Agent.ai (a HubSpot Next project).  It has 2.5M users and is growing. So, it's a *real* startup with real data. I get to also then show-off how we're using HubSpot with AgentAI to automate some things (like monitoring for VIP signups). 

3) WTF is an ACP (Agentic Customer Platform) and does a startup really need one?

4) Why can't I juse vibe code my own CRM?

5) Why wouldn't I just use one of the super-cool AI-native CRM products? 

Or...any questions that you folks have.

Phew!  I'm nervous...but excited.  

If you're already a HubSpot customer, THANK YOU! 

If not, then give me a chance to convince you.  :)

Visit:  GOHUBSPOT .ai

And in the meantime, please leave your comments, feedback, questions and pushbacks for upcoming videos.

Off to the races!

Thanks for your support.

#ILoveHubSpot #GoHubSpot

Woo hoo!  Thrilled to share a sneak peek of HubCode -- The Vibe Coding Tool for HubSpot.

I talked about this a few weeks ago (which feels like forever). 

Been cranking on it and am ready to show you the actual app now.  Link to video in the comments. Or, just type video.hubcode .com in your browser (it takes you to YouTube).

Some notes:

1) This requires no terminal -- runs completely in the cloud

2) You can vibe code both app cards and full apps that live inside the HubSpot web UI.

3) Generated apps can access data within HubSpot (of course).

4) SUPER EXCITING: Apps can reuse any of the public agents in agent .ai (there are 2,000+ of them). This makes your apps super-powerful because you can access all sorts of data and services. And, you can build your own agents and access them too.

This gives you access to all the major frontier models, a bunch of really useful data sources and a ton of other capability. Go to agent .ai to see what's available.

The demo shows pulling YouTube videos related to a company right into the app card.

5) You can paste in screenshots or other visuals as part of your vibe coding process (if you haven't done this before, it will feel magical). 

The HubCode app runs on the agent .ai platform and is in private beta (because this one's going to take some testing and iteration give the power and flexibility).  To apply, just go to hubcode .com.

This is an early "proof of concept", but will be iterating on it maniacally as I get user feedback.

Let me know what you think.  All thoughts, ideas, feedback and wishlist items appreciated.

FEEDBACK IS A GIFT.  Thank you!

Thank you for your support.

taplio

The Battle

April Dunford

Dharmesh Shah

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Performance ScoreApril Dunford's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreDharmesh Shah's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

April Dunford

Dharmesh Shah

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}April Dunford's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreDharmesh Shah's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreApril Dunford's LinkedIn Performance