Being Good Is Different From Being Distinctive

A business does not operate in isolation. Customers compare. They compare your product with competing products. They compare your service with other services. They compare your price, convenience, reputation, experience, expertise, reliability, and brand with the alternatives available to them.

Sometimes the most important competitor is not even another company. It may be whatever the customer is already doing. This means that creating a good product is only part of building a business. Founders must also develop a meaningful reason for customers to choose their business.

Being good and being distinctive are not the same thing.

Consider something as ordinary as ketchup. Walk into almost any supermarket and you will find multiple choices. A customer can buy the store brand, choose another national brand, or reach for Heinz. All of them perform essentially the same basic function. They are ketchup.

Heinz, however, has spent generations building meaning around its name. Its familiar bottle, recognizable branding, and iconic “57” have become associated with heritage, consistency, and an established standard of quality. Heinz is not simply asking customers to buy ketchup. The brand itself helps communicate what customers should expect from the product. That distinction matters.

When products within a category become increasingly similar, the ability to establish meaningful differentiation can influence whether a company competes primarily on price or has a reason to command a premium. This is especially important for founders entering industries that are already crowded or approaching commoditization. If customers perceive your product as interchangeable with five others, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain why they should pay more for yours. A competitor can lower its price, add a feature, or make a similar claim.

The founder therefore has to ask: What makes our business recognizable and meaningful beyond the basic function of what we sell?

Starbucks provides another example. Coffee itself is widely available and relatively easy for competitors to offer. Starbucks built something larger around it: a recognizable café experience, extensive drink customization, a particular vocabulary and ordering ritual, and a brand that customers recognize around the world. The company moved beyond simply being good at selling coffee. It became distinctive in how customers experienced coffee.

That is the opportunity founders should consider.

You may operate in a category filled with competitors. Your underlying product may even be relatively easy to reproduce. But that does not automatically mean your business has to become interchangeable.

The product may exist in a commodity-like category while the company builds a distinctive position around it.

And that distinction can become one of the most valuable things a founder builds.

Founder’s Reflection

Differentiation begins with understanding what customers should associate with your company that they do not automatically associate with everyone else in your category.

Ask yourself:

• If customers removed our company name from our product, website, or sales pitch, would they still recognize something meaningfully different about us?

• When customers have several alternatives available, what specific reason are we giving them to choose us?

• If our industry becomes increasingly commoditized, what are we building that could allow us to compete on something other than price?

• What do we want customers to immediately think or feel when they hear our company's name?