Great Product Marketing Kills Something Ugly

Use this simple messaging framework to show what your product replaces, what it eliminates, and why your customer should care.

Quick Insights 🔎

Startup snippets

1. The Ultimate Prompt from Andrew Chen 🤖
   Andrew Chen just shared the ChatGPT prompt he uses daily. It’s built for thinkers with pros/cons, follow-ups, links, examples. A cheat code for clarity.

2. Cursor cracks $100m ARR. 💥

   Cursor made half the dev stack look like overpriced scaffolding.

3. Windsurf’s $3B Plot Twist 🤖
   OpenAI buying Windsurf for $3B while investing in rival Cursor. AI acquisition drama, anyone?

Startup mental model 🧠

Chesterton’s Fence

Chesterton’s Fence says never tear down a fence until you know why it was built. Same with product messaging. Before you torch the “old way” on your homepage, understand why it still limps along. Then kill it publicly.

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This week’s big idea 📈

Why “All in One” already lost you the sale

I’ve sat through enough "value prop" meetings to last a lifetime.

But startups love them because they feel like progress.

I prefer something simpler. Blunter.

What dies when your product shows up?

Here's my way:

Great product marketing isn’t about adding more features. It's about killing something ugly in your customer's life.

Nobody wakes up craving a better feature set. They wake up dreading five messy tools and broken workflows.

Your job is to make their pain so obvious they reach for the lighter.

The average mid‑sized company still juggles 112 SAAS apps.

Do you think adding another "all-in-one" helps?

Seriously. I don’t care if it does 12 things. If I can’t kill at least three existing tools by switching to you, you’re just noise.

Instead, say something real:

“Fire Notion, Axe Airtable, Stop Paying Freelancers.”

Now I’m listening.

Proof that it works 🔥

You know who gets this right?

• Superhuman didn’t pitch “AI-powered email.” They said: “Save 4 hours per person, every week.” Gmail, gone.

• Shipfast didn’t promise a better way to launch. They showed how they delete hours of grunt work.

• Arc Browser doesn’t lead with features. It shows how it replaces tabs, bookmarks, and even note-taking tools giving users a whole new way to work online.

And of course Cursor? It replaced VS Code, GitHub Copilot, and half your dev process in one clean shot.

Devs don’t switch tools lightly. Cursor made them.

Result? $100 M ARR in 12 months.

The Reduction Framework 🪓

Thisis a framework I recommend so your product can grab your customers' attention.

Replace → Eliminate → Unlock

1. Replace: Name the tools or workflows you murder.

2. Eliminate: Spell out the grind that vanishes.

3. Unlock: Show the new superpower that appears.

Example:

We replace Slack Huddles and Google Docs. Eliminate 40-minute debriefs. Unlock AI summaries in 90 seconds.

If your copy can’t fill that template, you have a feature, not a business.

Two real insights You can steal

1. Make the Switching Trade Worth It.

People switch because you make the pain so obvious they have to.

Want better conversion? Stop pitching upside. Start torching the downside.

2. The Mass-Market Lie

Most SaaS startups fail because they’re trying to appeal to everyone. But great products win by building a small cult then slowly expanding out.

Mass appeal kills clarity. Pick a villain. Pick a pain.

Drive the knife in deep.

How to execute this perfectly

• Map the Before → List every hack, spreadsheet, and forehead-slap workaround your user touches

• Land the Killing Blow → Promise the ugliest one’s funeral in the first line

• Prove It Visually → A 10-second GIF of the pain evaporating beats 500 words

• Mine Switching Triggers → Ask new users: “What did you delete after adopting us?” That answer is tomorrow’s headline

• Repeat Like Dogma → Homepage, onboarding, investor deck: lead with the kill every time

Final thoughts

I used to obsess over value props. Tweak the wording. Polish the phrasing. Try to sound really clever.

But after shipping real products with real consequences, here’s what I’ve learned:

Nobody switches tools for features.

They switch to stop wasting time. They switch to kill the mess.

If your product walks in and nothing painful disappears, it’s just more noise. One more tab. One more thing to manage.

Good messaging shows your customers what they can finally stop doing.

Good product marketing = “Here’s what we do.”

Great product marketing = “Here’s what you’ll never do again.”

Until next week, keep building, no fairytales required.

Martin, Chief Ranter at Uncharted

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