Jira entered an existing market, a red ocean. Jira was founded in 2002 as a new competitor to the pre-existing Bugzilla, IBM Rational ClearQuest, and Mercury Interactive. Jira gained its advantage from its more flexible, web-based design. Jira believed that product managers would appreciate their efforts at developer-friendly design enough to switch from their current issue-tracking software.
Linear resegmented the existing market by creating a high-performing product for a more niche customer base. Since Linear remained in the existing market, it was also playing in a red ocean. Linear was founded in 2019 and has competitors including Atlassian (Jira, Confluence), Meticulous, and Bugasura. Linear specifically targeted small to mid-sized engineering teams and startups who preferred efficiency and simplicity over detailed personalization capabilities. Linear believed that the rigorous pace of work for product managers in startups would make a simpler model preferable.
Productboard created a new market by focusing on collecting customer feedback, creating roadmaps, and automating workflows. Productboard was founded in 2014 and initially operated in a blue ocean. However, other alternatives including Aha! and Atlassian’s Jira Product Discovery emerged, creating an increasingly red ocean. Productboard believed that product managers were busy enough to want to offload some of the logistical and organizational mental energy to an agentic PM system
