Although Jira, Linear, and Productboard all sell to product teams, it’s interesting to observe how each entered the market with a very different bet about what PMs actually needed.
Jira: Existing Market -> Red Ocean. Jira entered an already established market for tracking software work. Its bet was that teams would pay for a better, more flexible way to organize issues and projects. This made adoption easier because Jira did not have to teach customers a completely new behavior. But the same flexibility that helped Jira serve many teams also created room for competitors to attack its complexity.
Linear: Resegmented Market -> Blue Patch in a Red Ocean. Linear did not invent issue tracking. Instead, it focused on fast-moving software teams that valued speed, simplicity, and a polished experience. As we talked about in class on last Thursday, resegmentation means finding a group an incumbent serves poorly. Linear’s bet was that Jira worked, but not well enough for this narrower group.
Productboard: New Market -> Blue Ocean. Productboard made a different bet. They said PMs needed a dedicated system for deciding what to build, not just tracking what was already being built. It brought customer feedback, prioritization, and roadmaps into one product, effectively creating a new category of PM software.
What stood out to me is that red and blue oceans are not completely binary. Linear shows how a company can find a small patch of blue inside a crowded market by choosing its customer more carefully.
