Positioning & USP recommendations v1
Cadence: updated monthly by the research function. Last updated: 2026-05-05.
Current USP statement (live website)
"Build the product. Not the sw-foundation."
ROSA gives embedded teams the tooling, code generation, and platform foundation to ship connected products faster, with less platform risk holding them back.
My recommendation
Keep "Build the product. Not the sw-foundation." as the public hero line — it's clean and direct.
But shift the subhead to the finance-led framing for executive audiences. The current subhead reads as engineering benefit ("ship faster, less platform risk"). The buyer above the engineer needs to hear capital efficiency.
Suggested executive subhead variants (to A/B test)
A) "Stop funding the same firmware foundation across every new board, standard and SKU."
B) "Convert open-ended firmware spend into a fixed-scope foundation that compounds across product variants."
C) "The reusable firmware layer beneath your differentiated product. So next year's hardware change isn't another rebuild."
USP structure (the three things to be famous for)
- Architecture, not tooling. ROSA is the firmware architecture layer above Zephyr/Yocto, not a competitor to them.
- Reuse economics. The cost of the next variant goes down, not up. That is the sale.
- CRA-aligned by design. Updateability, lifecycle support, vulnerability handling are part of the foundation — not a separate "compliance" project.
What to not claim
- Not "the only" anything — early-stage credibility doesn't survive that
- Not specific %-improvement claims without a customer reference to back them
- Not "AI-powered" or "next-gen" — the customers we want hate that
- Not multi-vertical hero claims — pick a vertical per landing page
Vertical-specific positioning lines (suggested)
| Vertical | Hook |
|---|---|
| Building automation | "KNX IoT, Matter, fewer rebuilds. The firmware foundation for European building-device makers." |
| Industrial edge | "OPC UA, fieldbus, multi-board. The firmware layer that survives your next industrial product variant." |
| Smart home | "Matter and Thread without the rebuild tax. Standardised firmware foundation for the next family of devices." |
| AgriTech | "LoRaWAN, long lifecycles, harsh environments. The firmware foundation built for products that ship and stay shipped." |
Open USP questions (need data before recommending)
- Should ROSA be positioned as a product or a platform engagement model? Product = SaaS-like, platform engagement = consulting-led. Site copy currently mixes both.
- What is the smallest paid commitment? The architecture assessment is a candidate but isn't visible on the site yet. Making it visible reduces the perceived all-or-nothing trap.
- Is there a community / open-source component to the strategy? Most adjacent vendors (Zephyr, Yocto, hawkBit, Foundries Community, Mender OSS) have an open base. If ROSA stays fully proprietary, that's a defensible choice but should be explicit in messaging.
These three are the next strategic conversations to have with Markus.
Last modified 2026-05-05. Suggest a change to this page →