Obviously Awesome
You know your product is awesome-but does anybody else? Successfully connecting your product with consumers isn't a matter of following trends, comparing yourself to the competition or trying to attract the widest customer base. So what is it? April Dunford, positioning guru and tech exec, is here to enlighten you.
Stats for nerds
17recommend
22mentions
18people
2020–2026years
91% recommend9% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I believe that we generally agree.
> Technical ability != building something people want, will use on a daily basis, and provides economic value or enjoyment for humans. Models have been trained to be superhuman at the former, not the latter. Taste is what allows humans to do the latter.
I think finally learned of the role title and the audiobook to teach me about this. It will also be replaced, but one of the last "tech" roles to be automated. It's where the taste lives, right?
Role: Product Marketing Manager - with a tech background and agentic dev skills (although the last part is most fleeting)
Book: Obviously Awesome
If anyone else would care to educate me about this here, please and thank you!
- Started making side projects as a developer this year and hope to start working on my own products full-time from next year. Two books I found useful for positioning the product:
- Obviously Awesome by April Dunford (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45166937-obviously-aweso...)
- Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210137279-building-a-sto...)
- This is so funny. I've read both these books and absolutely loved Obviously Awesome and could not stand StoryBrand.
Wrote reviews on both Obviously Awesome[0] and StoryBrand[1] for anyone interested.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5369411790 [1] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5686301930
- Microsoft offers "certification" for Copilot usage.
I stopped offering to build custom demos for AGI pipelines last year because people just didn't get it. April Dunford's "Obviously Awesome" pretty simply covers why, because as very much not a product-person, I frequently fall prey to "if you build it, they will come" mentality.
- - Zero to One, Peter Thiel
Always makes me feel that I’m not ambitious enough. And that too many smart people are in the wrong industry (finance).
- The Dip, Seth Godin
Don’t give up. Unless you’re in a cul-de-sac.
- Obviously Awesome, April Dunford
Your competitor is often not who you think it is.
- Thanks! I stole this structure from Obviously Awesome [1] by April Dunford, highly recommended.
I just noticed the main submission link goes to the Google Sheets add-on, instead of the Google Forms add-on [2]. Oh well.
[1] https://www.aprildunford.com/books
[2] https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/qr_code_pass_fo...
