April Dunford

April Dunford spent 30 years as a repeat VP of Marketing across seven venture-backed B2B technology startups — including DataMirror (acquired by IBM), Janna Systems (acquired by Siebel Systems, then SAP), and Watcom (acquired by Sybase). She launched 16 products during that executive career, ran marketing, product, and sales teams simultaneously, and sat inside companies like IBM, Nortel, and Siebel Systems before…

April Dunford spent 30 years as a repeat VP of Marketing across seven venture-backed B2B technology startups — including DataMirror (acquired by IBM), Janna Systems (acquired by Siebel Systems, then SAP), and Watcom (acquired by Sybase). She launched 16 products during that executive career, ran marketing, product, and sales teams simultaneously, and sat inside companies like IBM, Nortel, and Siebel Systems before making the move to full-time consulting in 2015. Her University of Waterloo engineering degree is the foundation she credits for treating positioning as a systems problem rather than a creative exercise. She teaches one core thing: product positioning. Her primary self-paced and cohort course is the Positioning Sprint, hosted on Section (formerly Section4), priced at $750 standalone or $1,000 with a Section membership. The sprint runs two weeks and includes two live sessions with Dunford plus case studies drawn from her work with clients like Postman, Help Scout, and Shopify. She also runs private half-day and full-day positioning workshops for corporate teams — reportedly priced at $30,000+ for a three-day facilitated engagement — though pricing is not publicly listed. Her two books, Obviously Awesome (2019) and Sales Pitch (2023), are widely used as companion materials. Her Substack newsletter has over 38,000 subscribers. Her podcast, Positioning with April Dunford, has an active back catalog and runs on YouTube and Spotify. Student and reader feedback across LinkedIn, Goodreads, and Section's own platform is consistently strong. The Positioning Sprint is described by students as "very actionable" and "one of the best sprints" on Section. Obviously Awesome holds a strong rating on Goodreads and is regularly cited as a top-10 business book by marketers. The main criticism is scope: some readers find the book and course primarily useful for B2B tech companies and early-to-mid-stage startups, with limited direct application to consumer products or service businesses. Her private consulting is acknowledged as premium and selective — she takes on a limited number of engagements annually. AllPros exists to verify exactly what students experience beyond the marketing. Dunford has a strong reputation and a real methodology backed by 200+ client companies, but independently verified student results — completion rates, revenue impact, team adoption — are not publicly available. If you've taken the Positioning Sprint or worked with Dunford directly, your review on AllPros adds signal the market is missing. Positioning, Marketing Strategy and Brand Development