Atlassian’s Jira tools happened because of a happy accident: the company itself needed a better bug tracking system, so it created its own internal suite of tools. They believed that PMs are mostly responsible for tracking product execution and developments, which is why they designed their product that way. They entered an existing market, since they needed better tools themselves, which makes it a red ocean. Linear, on the other hand, designed its tools for a specific subset of PMs: those who want a high-performance toolkit built for the modern development team. It bet on the technical expertise of the people in the space, and their need for something fast, and lightweight. This is a resegmentation of the market, and it’s a red ocean. As for Productboard, they argued that the PM needs a whole suite of tools other than tracking product development; they need a space to explore the problem, understand the user, study the competitive landscape and fully synthesize all of that information to build a roadmap for a successful product. This is another resegmentation of the market, but it’s a blue ocean, since the other tools defined a PM’s job more narrowly.
