Ekaterina Howard 4/9/25 Ekaterina Howard 4/9/25

[S2E4] How to: message testing on a budget

Alex Atkins, VP of Marketing at Sturdy, walks us through the process of continuously optimizing the homepage variations by combining message testing, reaching out to target ICPs for feedback, and (sometimes) asking for help.

In this episode:

How Sturdy messaging changed with the rise of "AI-powered" messaging everywhere
How Alex combined outreach and running messaging test
His approach to increasing messaging stickiness without sacrificing clarity

Ekaterina Howard 3/20/25 Ekaterina Howard 3/20/25

[S2E3] How to: positioning

Before you start building a category of one (please don’t), listen to this conversation about positioning against incumbents. It’ll save you a lot of sweat and tears.

In this episode:

How B2B buyers think about shopping (hint: they don’t think it’s fun)
What startups can do to go against “big guys” and win
Examples of great positioning in the wild

Ekaterina Howard 2/27/25 Ekaterina Howard 2/27/25

[S2E2] How to find winning angles for your competitor pages

Competitor comparison pages are a must-have for every startup that’s ready to grow. Or are they?

In this episode:

When startups should consider building competitor comparison pages
How to think about framing the conversation
How competitor research can help with future differentiation and product development
Pros and cons of 2 popular frameworks: “Us vs everybody else” and “Why we’re better than {X}”

Ekaterina Howard 2/14/25 Ekaterina Howard 2/14/25

[S2E1] How to make research (like JTBD) a part of your company’s business processes with Eric White, ponder*

Ekaterina Howard 6/8/23 Ekaterina Howard 6/8/23

Questions you should be asking to write better conversion copy

In this post: 3 sets of questions that would help you solve these 3 common startup challenges:

Coming up with a value prop that would work across ICPs

Uncovering hidden objections that are stopping your prospects from converting
Pre-launch sanity check (obvious, but frequently overlooked)

Ekaterina Howard 1/31/22 Ekaterina Howard 1/31/22

5 signs your B2B SaaS startup isn't ready to scale — and how to fix it

Unpopular opinion: moving faster is easier when you have a solid foundation.

It runs contrary to the “move fast and break things” motto — but as you go from startup to scaleup, moving fast and breaking your ad funnels costs conversions without opening up new opportunities.

For the purposes of this post, we’re assuming that you already have happy customers, found MPF and have developed a growth strategy.

If not — running fast and lean experiments makes a world of sense.

But if you’re at the point when it’s all about growth, then read on to find out about a (tragically undervalued) document that’ll take your growth foundations from shaky to rock-solid — and help you scale faster and without driving CAC through the roof.