The main difference to me is Jira sold better execution, Linear sold simpler execution, and Productboard sold better product decisions.
Jura, Linear, and Product Board are very interesting to me because they show three different ways we can enter a market. Jira entered an existing market because bug tracking already existed. However, the tools were not great, and Jira instead made a better version that teams could not easily bind or configure. Atlassian built Jira because they were frustrated with the bug tracking software they were using currently. This was a red ocean bet because there was an already established industry with many competitors. Jira had to believe that software teams would be willing to pay more process those also flexible and usable.
Linear feels more like a resegmented market because they did not invent the issue of tracking. They basically said that Jira was too complicated and was slow for a certain type of customer. That is, software teams that move fast and are modern. Linear had to believe that some teams actually wanted less configurability, less process, and just a faster product in general. That starts in a red ocean but creates a smaller blue pocket by selling to each specific customer better.
Productboard is the newest compared to the other incumbents. They created a dedicated system around tracking and deciding what gets built, rather than just execution collect customer feedback and prioritize ideas that help contribute to the existing roadmap. That was much more blue ocean, in my opinion. We bet that PMs had an important role before the Jira ticket even existed, and that spreadsheets, docs, and Jira did not prove to be enough.
