Every successful startup faces critical marketing decisions from day one. How do you establish your value proposition? Which customers should you target first? What channels deliver the best ROI with limited resources?

During a recent session with a former executive Kady Srinivasan from Lightspeed Commerce, Dropbox, and Klaviyo, several powerful insights emerged on how early-stage companies should approach marketing. Here are three key takeaways:

1. Define Your ICP Before Anything Else

The most fundamental decision for any startup is determining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Without clarity on exactly who you’re targeting, marketing efforts become diluted and ineffective.

“I think it’s super important to know which layer of this you are tackling”. “What we were selling was not just email marketing. We were actually selling email as a growth lever, meaning we could go in and say, ‘we’re going to help you drive 40% of your revenue from email,’ which was completely not done in the industry before.”

When launching a startup, narrowly defining your ideal customer profile (ICP) is not just helpful—it’s essential for survival. Focus is “the most important thing” for startups, with “trying to straddle too many things” being “the biggest killer of startup success.”

A precise ICP forces you to concentrate your limited resources on a specific audience where you can perfect your sales motion, messaging & value proposition.

2. Counter-Position Against Industry Norms

Early-stage startups can gain significant traction by deliberately positioning against industry assumptions. This isn’t about attacking competitors directly, but rather challenging how customers think about solving their problems.

“Counter-positioning is essential for startups because there’s a way that the world has moved, and you are saying, ’no, I think it will move differently,’” one participant noted. “You have to surprise the buyer. You have to tell them, ‘you’re thinking about the world incorrectly.’”

Klaviyo did this brilliantly by positioning itself not as an email tool but as a revenue driver. They told customers, “Google is killing all your third-party cookies. You will only have first-party data to rely on, so if this is your time to switch, you have to do it now.” This created urgency around the problem and showed customers what was at stake.

3. Build Credibility Through Brand Value, Not Fear

While fear can drive short-term action, it creates negative brand associations. The most successful companies build marketing around positive outcomes and aspirational values.

“Creating fear never works, because in the immediate, you can probably prompt people to take action because they’re like, ‘Oh my! I must do something,’ but it leaves a negative perception in their mind.” “You don’t become a beloved brand over a period of time.”

Instead, focus on how your solution helps customers achieve positive outcomes. Klaviyo positioned itself as a premium brand that took its craft as seriously as its customers did. “We don’t want to be like every other B2B email company with blue fonts. We want to be completely different,” they explained, emphasizing how they aligned with the values of their e-commerce customers.

The Path Forward

As you craft your marketing strategy, remember this advice: “Your marketing should answer: I’m the best at… I’m the only… I’m the fastest ever… That automatically gets you into the blue ocean space. You’re playing a different game at that point.”