With Jira, the company entered an existing market–bug and issue tracking had existed in the form of Bugzilla. Jira therefore competed in a red ocean, where there was already an existing need and the problem was to build a better product within the issue-tracking space. Their better product came in the form of a more flexible, user-friendly, and accessible tool that could support a wider range of team workflows beyond basic bug tracking. Their bet was that users would adopt a more flexible tool that offered complex features.
Linear resegmented the market by narrowing their scope down to smaller, fast-moving startups prioritized speed and simplicity. While their product is described in a similar manner to issue trackers like Jira, their opinionated and streamlined experience helps differentiate themselves from more complex tools. Linear still operates in a red ocean since it competes for users that already use issue-tracking tools; however, it creates a niche by focusing on specific types of product managers and teams. The bet they took was that there were PMs at fast paced startups who would prefer a highly simplified workflow over an existing tool which was slower.
Productboard was entering a new market, playing in a blue ocean. Their product focused on an underserved part of the PM workflow: understanding customer needs and prioritizing opportunities. The founder, Hubert Palan, noted that “the customers and their needs are completely missing from the systems we use.” This reflects Productboard’s core bet that PMs needed a dedicated system for product discovery and strategy that could not be found in any other existing product.
These companies show how different market strategies can emerge around similar users and workflows. Ultimately, each company’s success depended on making a different assumption about what product managers valued and where existing tools were falling short.
