# Marcus Thibodeau, Founder & CEO at Stackform — read of Positioning Auditor, June 23 2026

> 9 years building B2B SaaS, currently running a 12-person project-management tool for architecture firms that has great retention and a conversion page I am actively embarrassed by.

## How I got here

Lenny's Newsletter mentioned Wishdeal Studio in a "tools I've been looking at" aside two weeks ago. I bookmarked it. This morning I had 20 minutes between standups and finally clicked it. I typed "positioning audit SaaS" into the search bar on the site and landed on this page. The URL slug alone ("saas-founder-positioning-framework") made me hesitate because it sounds like a course outline from 2019, but I kept reading.

## What I clicked first

"Your Positioning Isn't Converting." That headline worked on me. Not because it's clever. Because it's just true and I haven't seen a tool say it that flatly. Most tools in this space say "unlock your growth potential" or "turn visitors into customers." This one just says the quiet part out loud. I appreciated that for about eight seconds.

## Where I paused

The scoring block stopped me. Specifically this line: "financial upside: 1/10." That's a wild thing to put on your own product page. Underneath it: "Year-1 take-home (Fermi) $-17,920." Negative. They projected negative income for year one and published it. I read that paragraph three times. I couldn't decide if it was genuinely courageous or if it was a rhetorical trick to make me trust everything else. It still hasn't resolved for me.

## What I distrusted

Two things, and one of them is structural.

First, the structural problem: I genuinely cannot tell if this is a tool I use or a business idea I buy. The hero says "Start Your Audit" like it's a SaaS product I can log into. But the pricing section says "Browse Free. Unlock for $5. Adopt for $99." What does "Adopt the build" mean? Am I buying a license to operate this positioning service as my own business? That's a fundamentally different product than "we audit your positioning." The page never resolves this. By the end I was more confused than when I started.

Second, the deliverable language is extremely vague. "Messaging Reframe: New value prop, headline, and battle card aligned to buyer journey." Okay. How? Via what? Do I fill out a form? Do I talk to a human? Does an AI generate it? The process is completely invisible. "Sales Enablement Kit: Updated pitch, one-pager, and discovery questions your team uses immediately" -- uses immediately after what? This could mean a PDF in my inbox or a six-week consulting engagement. The page does not tell me.

## What would convince me

I want to see one before/after. Not a generic "here's bad copy and here's good copy." I want to see: company name, original homepage headline in quotes, new headline in quotes, and one data point tied to the change. Open rate on cold outreach. Demo conversion rate. Anything with a number attached to a real company's actual name. The "Honest disclosure: we don't have live customers on this idea yet" is refreshing but it also means there's literally no proof this works in practice.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. When you say "Analyze current messaging against 40+ trigger events observed in your market segment" -- what does that process actually look like for me as a buyer? Do I submit my URL, fill out a questionnaire, get on a call?

2. The $5 dossier and the $99 adoption tier seem aimed at two very different buyers. Which one are you actually trying to sell? Who is your current customer, even informally?

3. The "Operator partnership, Custom" tier says "Hire the team that built this to install, customize, and run launch with you." Run launch of what exactly -- my positioning project or the Positioning Auditor product itself for my own clients?

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The honesty is real and unusual and it kept me on the page longer than I expected. But I left without knowing what I would actually receive if I paid $5, and that's a product communication failure that the page's own score (landing page quality: 6/10) at least admits.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-06-23. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*