The strongest brands are coasting on old positioning decisions. Stop making new ones, and the window opens for whoever understands the buyer better than you do. Two accounting companies show exactly what that looks like, and neither founder got there by planning it.

AI is not a positioning strategy. It's a mechanism. The companies winning on AI aren't the ones leading with the technology. They're the ones who found the buyer problem first and used AI to solve it better than anyone else.

Nobody goes looking for a platform. They go looking for a solution to a specific problem. The platform is what makes them stay. Most platform websites have this sequence completely backwards.

Most companies know who their best buyer is. They just won't say it on the page because naming one buyer feels like excluding everyone else. It doesn't. It just makes the right one feel found.

This week I'm sharing what 92 websites taught me about why product positioning breaks down — and what it actually costs.