Stop "Panic Pivoting” with Frankenstein Messages
Positioning Toolkit for Acquiring Your Ideal First Customers
Our Self-Diagnostic, Positioning Guides, and Action Planner Empowers You to Diagnose Your top Roadblock and Power Adoption
Does Your Message Feel Lost or Scattered?
You're a dedicated social impact leader, pouring your energy into making a difference. But does any of this sound familiar?
Without a clear framework, it becomes hard to distinguish between value propositions that crates fleeting interest—what sounds cool—to genuine readiness from your audience and stakeholders to commit and engage.
Introducing the DIY Positioning Clarity Toolkit
This isn't just another set of generic worksheets. It's your personal launchpad for strategic clarity – a comprehensive digital toolkit meticulously designed to empower you to conduct a rigorous self-assessment of your current strategic positioning. Built with proven frameworks distilled from expert insight, this guide puts foundational strategic thinking directly into your hands.
With the Positioning Clarity Self-Audit & Guide, you will personally diagnose the core issues in your messaging and offer structure. You'll use our tools to gain initial clarity on your ideal niche, begin crafting a value proposition, and start structuring your core offerings – creating a stronger starting point for all your communications and any future expert collaboration.
Three Key Steps: Positioning Self-Diagnostic & Guide
Why This Toolkit? Expert Frameworks, Made Accessible for You.
Empower Your Foundational Work: This guide is designed for you to do the critical early thinking. This toolkit doesn't replace expert consultation, but it makes you an incredibly prepared client for strategic, cost-effective help.
The clarity you gain here is the ideal foundation before considering an engagement like our Expert Positioning Audit Report, where an expert then builds upon and validates your foundational work.
Trusted by
Dan Wu, JD/PhD
Lead Innovation Advisor
SVP of Product & Chief Strategy Officer. As a go-to-market-focused product leader, I’ve led and launched products and teams at tech startups in highly-regulated domains, ranging from 6 to 8 figures in revenue
Led core products and product marketing key to pre-seed to E raises across highly-regulated industries such as data/AI governance, real estate, & fintech; rebuilt buyer / user journeys to triple conversion rates; Won Toyota’s national startup competition
Harvard JD/PhD focused on responsible innovation for basic needs & cross-sector social capital formation, with a strong background in mixed-methods research
Selected as a National Science Foundation fellow & published on responsible strategy and innovation in outlets like Oxford University Press, Fast Company, & Techcrunch (more here)
First-generation college student prioritizing inclusion and belonging in his practice
I was raised by a single mother without a high school degree. I’m passionate about mentoring and coaching using methods that “works with” (versus “do to”), sensitive to one’s constraints and experiences.
Published in
Innovation Advisor to Social Impact Leaders
I look forward to my discussions with Dan more than any other. After each interaction, I come away with tangible work products that we can immediately apply.
Dan Wu is incredible. His CEO coaching has been transformative for me. He adeptly, patiently, and carefully facilitates conversations so that we both come away with new insights, to which he immediately follows up with strategies and practical steps. While we started work on product managing, Dan uncovered that my priorities shifted to go-to-market, sales, fundraising, and operations, and was able to step in all these other domains to provide support.
I look forward to my calls with Dan more than any other. After each call, I come away with tangible work products that we can immediately apply. His questions, content, and templates elegantly clarify problems, break them down into smaller pieces, and generate new experiments to test. Our work together has resulted in faster learning and growth across these critical and diverse domains. Maybe most importantly, our work has instilled a new sense of progress, hope, and energy that is so valuable in the ups and downs of being a startup CEO. His capacity to distill challenges, unlock creative solutions, and his keen ability to make individuals feel heard and valued has been a major reason for our productive sessions.
He’s a light, helping me see with more clarity where to spend my energy and how to move us forward. I highly recommend Dan to others seeking coaching for their startup, in GTM, product, sales, or all of the above!
- CEO, Brightlines (women-own/led) & former Partner, Truman National Security Project
Dan helped me tremendously improve my strategic positioning and website; my network has already complimented me on how much clearer and more compelling my offer is.
He helped me navigate through the complexities of the larger ecosystem in which my work is embedded to simplify what matters most for my local market, authentically reflecting my approach. Dan’s workshops helped me understand what I needed or didn’t need and speak to a broader audience, outside of a very slim academic one. The clarity and cohesiveness he brought to my messaging, especially around the 'Co-Cities' framework, have been invaluable. In addition to his live workshop sessions, he shared very useful guides and templates in advance that I could easily understand and apply, helping me sharpen core concepts like what success means for my website, the differentiated value proposition, and the call to action. Dan truly cares and I’m grateful for this opportunity to work with him and I’m dedicated to finding more ways to work with him on more projects. If you're looking for someone who can help you cut through the noise and truly amplify your message, Dan Wu is the strategic expert you need. Highly recommended.
- Executive Director of LabGov-US; Law & Public Policy Professor at Columbia and Georgetown
There were moments when I could not see light at the end of the tunnel. I survived because of his guidance and support.
Dan Wu has been an exceptional executive coach. In short, there were moments when I could not see light at the end of the tunnel. I survived because of his guidance and support. He has provided invaluable strategic guidance with a diverse array of problems — including target market selection, GTM opportunity prioritization, operational efficiency, grant proposals, sales, pricing, negotiation, product strategy, & board management — helped me secure new revenue and validate emerging business models. His responsiveness, project management skills, and proactive approach have also helped me enhance organization, focus, and clarity to our GTM and revenue operations. Dan's coaching has been instrumental in tackling challenges in real time, and his ability to pivot seamlessly based on new information has proven invaluable. He is also a pleasure to work with. In summary, I wholeheartedly recommend him to any organization seeking transformative growth.
- Executive Director, JustFix (funded by Robin Hood, Open Society, & Chan Zuckerberg Initiative)
Dan is a brilliant, strategic thinker that is capable of rigorously optimizing any product, tactic, GTM plan, or business process.
For instance, his product strategy and roadmap concisely synthesized user and buyer data, aligned sales, product, and customer success, and helped us boost user adoption and conversion rates.
- Cofounder & Head of Engineering, Stake (Series A)
Dan Wu is a masterful product strategy consultant. His approach, with a strong focus on business and GTM strategy, helped us prioritize product features throughout our product portfolio.
His unique methods helped develop alignment and business value before jumping into technical details. Together we crafted clear workback plans and roadmaps, which have been incredibly helpful for our strategic product decisions.
He specifically helped me navigate complex thoughts on a new version of a product into a presentable format, skillfully trimming unnecessary details that wouldn't relate to others not in the weeds. Dan also excelled at keeping meetings on track and ensuring everyone's feedback was heard and addressed, keeping us aligned and focused on our objectives.
Working with Dan was an invaluable experience. If you need someone who can create alignment on and drive progress on strategic objectives, Dan is your go-to person. Excited to work with him in the future!
- SVP Product & Delivery, Cecilian (Series A)
Dan showed me the power of an excellent coach, introducing me to fresh models, novel approaches, and assuming the roles of both thought partner and accountability advocate.
I've always approached coaching with a certain skepticism, believing that the value lies in someone who has outperformed me by tenfold. My work with Dan as a CEO coach has dramatically altered this perspective. Dan showed me the power of an excellent coach, introducing me to fresh models, novel approaches, and assuming the roles of both thought partner and accountability advocate. His guidance has been pivotal in driving me towards strategic objectives that often slip down the priority list, but with his insights, are now achieved more swiftly and thoughtfully.
For instance, Dan’s coaching has been invaluable in accelerating our fundraising and recruiting process. His proactive approach in identifying our most pressing priorities, prioritizing our top jobs-to-be-done, and linking them to our success criteria to our hiring process has already made a significant impact. With his assistance, we not only pinpointed an exceptional candidate but also nimbly steered away from potential pitfalls.
Furthermore, what sets Dan apart as an CEO coach compared to others I’ve worked with is his ability to translate blockers and priorities into action in real time. The artifacts we craft together in our sessions build upon prior work, setting us up for immediate impact and continuous progress and learning. I highly recommend him and am grateful for his expertise. I’m excited to refer him to my portfolio companies.
- Managing Partner & Co-founder at Third Sphere VC (formerly Urban Us)
With Dan, you get great strategic thought partnership, high emotional intelligence, and excellent execution.
Dan is an excellent product leader. His work as our product lead for our major partnership with a global, public digital workflow company was outstanding. He owned this strategic project with minimal onboarding and delivered results weeks ahead of schedule. Because Dan generated the trust he could lead the project, he ultimately freed up my time to focus on broader co-founder-level priorities & advanced us in a big way towards one of our major strategic GTM goals. Dan is willing to not only roll up his sleeves to create detailed API specs but also think broadly about project risks and success. For instance, he thoughtfully helped us avoid a potentially suboptimal experience with a major lead and made progress, despite coordination challenges, by working with the devs on both teams directly. Ultimately, his focus on GTM/CS-aligned product management is a breath of fresh air. I’m excited to work with Dan on more projects as a thought partner. He made a difficult project look easy!
- Co-Founder & CEO (City Innovate-Series A) and ex-Chief Innovation Officer (City of San Francisco)
Dan is both a standout researcher and strategic thought partner whose innovative thinking and systematic approach truly set him apart.
His ability to generate diverse ideas -- drawing from his own lived experience at the intersection of law, technology, and business -- while applying a rigorous methodology was helpful in our recent law review publication about digital transformations in legal departments. What impresses me most about Dan is his free-thinking nature and creativity. He's not afraid to go off the beaten path and explore new possibilities, all the while demonstrating an admirable level of maturity and thoughtfulness. More generally as a thought partner, he has a brilliant approach to quickly create clarity and insights. For instance, in one workshop with me, he listened carefully and sharpened raw ideas quickly, triggering new thinking, insights, and practical action points to clarify a major strategic decision I was contemplating. In summary, I highly recommend Dan and am eager for more conversations and collaborations.
- SVP at GSK, public company and global leader in biopharmaceuticals (70k employees)
It’s hard to put into words how transformative my time with Dan has been…Because of Dan’s guidance, I’m now far better equipped to lead the our data and technology department.
It’s hard to put into words how transformative my time with Dan has been. He was the catalyst for a real turning point in my career, helping me see myself as a strong manager and leader before I even believed it myself. Dan has an uncanny ability to match my direct, to-the-point communication style, which created a deep level of trust right from the start. I always felt I could be completely honest with him—and his thoughtful, in-kind responses never failed to steer me in the right direction.
Because of Dan’s guidance, I’m now far better equipped to lead the Working Families Party’s data and technology department, particularly in the realm of fundraising—a space that was uncharted territory for us. With his help, we’re opening up new revenue streams to support our data and tech ambitions, which is something that simply wouldn’t have happened without his strategic insights. Gosh, I think I've only just scratched the surface of what Dan knows; we could have another year-long engagement to go deeper.
There were times I walked into our sessions feeling like I’d hit a wall—that I couldn’t possibly keep going. Dan was always ready with tangible, practical advice that helped me push through an incredibly tough year. His knack for translating complex ideas into direct, actionable steps gave me the momentum I needed in everything from leadership challenges to startup-style fundraising efforts.
If Dan and I hadn’t worked together, I wouldn’t have gained the perspective, clarity, and level-headedness needed to navigate critical conversations both internally and externally. I can say with total confidence that our organization, WFP, is in a much better spot because of Dan.
I wholeheartedly recommend Dan to anyone seeking an advisor with deep business expertise and an empathetic yet rigorous, action-oriented approach.
- Chief Technology Officer, Working Families Party (funded by Tides, Rockefeller Family Fund, and Democracy Alliance)
Move from Fragmented Ideas to Focused Impact
Take control of your strategic narrative. This toolkit gives you the expert-designed structure to diagnose your current positioning and build a clearer, more compelling foundation – affordably and at your own pace.
Frequently Asked Questions about the DIY Positioning Clarity Toolkit
Q1: We've received a lot of conflicting advice from past advisors. How does this guide help?
A: This guide helps you cut through that feeling of having received fragmented input by providing a structured framework for your own analysis. It empowers you to build an internal consensus on your core positioning first, creating a strong foundation from which to evaluate any future external advice.
Q2: We tend to make reactive changes often. Can this guide help us be more strategic?
A: Absolutely. One of the main goals of this guide is to move you from reactive, ad hoc decision-making to a more deliberate, evidence-based approach. By working through the diagnostic, you'll build a clearer understanding of your core strengths and focus, reducing the tendency to shift direction without a solid rationale.
Q3: We're not sure if our UVP is clear, and our conversion from initial interest to real commitment is low. How does this toolkit address that?
A: These are classic symptoms of unclear positioning! The Niche Clarity Canvas and Value Proposition Crafting Guide within this toolkit are specifically designed to help you sharpen both your understanding of who you're for and what unique value you offer them. This foundational clarity is often the key to improving conversion rates. If, after using this guide, you want expert validation of your new UVP, our Expert Positioning Audit Report is the perfect next step.
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