There is a position in almost every market that looks reasonable, sounds reasonable, and is in fact one of the most reliable ways to kill a venture. I call it the stuck middle. It is the position a founder ends up in when they have not made the deliberate strategic choice between premium and economy, and have instead drifted into a posture that is better than economy but cheaper than premium. The drift produces a venture that, on paper, looks well-positioned. In the market, it is invisible.
I want to argue in this piece that the stuck middle is the most common failure mode in African early-stage ventures, and that the stuckness is structural rather than incidental. It happens not because founders chose to be in the middle, but because they failed to choose, and the absence of choice produced the middle by default.
What the stuck middle actually is
In any market, customers sort themselves into two distinct groups by what they prioritise. One group prioritises quality, experience, and outcome, and is willing to pay a premium for them. The other group prioritises price and accessibility, and accepts a reduced experience to keep the cost down. Each group is sizeable, each is profitable to serve, and each rewards a venture that targets them deliberately.
The stuck middle is the position taken by ventures that are too expensive for the price-sensitive group and not premium enough for the experience-seeking group. The customer at the price-sensitive end looks at the venture’s prices, compares to a cheaper alternative, and chooses the cheaper one. The customer at the premium end looks at the venture’s offering, compares to a higher-quality alternative, and chooses the higher-quality one. The middle is left with whatever customers neither cared enough about price to seek the discount nor cared enough about experience to seek the premium. That residual customer is rare, low-margin, and exhausting to serve, and the venture spends its energy trying to extract revenue from a segment that, by definition, has no strong reason to be there.
Most African founders end up in the stuck middle for a particular reason. They have not made an explicit choice about which strategic posture their venture is taking. They believe they are offering “good value,” which sounds attractive but describes nothing in particular. They are aiming for “quality at a fair price,” which is the marketing language of every undifferentiated venture in every market. They are trying to be everything to everyone, and the customer interprets this, correctly, as nothing in particular for anyone.
The two real strategic positions
There are two strategic positions that work in any market, and both require deliberate choice and operational consistency.
The first is the premium position. The venture commits to delivering an experience or outcome at a level the rest of the category cannot match. The customer pays a premium, knows they are paying a premium, and feels that the premium is justified by what they receive. The operational discipline required is significant: hiring is selective, training is extensive, the experience is meticulously designed, and the price reflects what it costs to deliver excellence consistently. Premium-positioned ventures operate at lower volumes and higher margins. They are not for every customer, and they should not try to be. The founder’s job is to refuse the customer who would pay less if asked, even when the immediate revenue would be welcome, because admitting that customer corrupts the position.
The second is the economy position. The venture commits to delivering the core function of the category at a price the price-sensitive customer can afford, by ruthlessly stripping out everything that is not the core function. The customer pays less, knows they are paying less, and accepts a reduced experience as the trade-off for the lower price. The operational discipline is different but equally demanding: the venture has to be lean, automated, and efficient at a level that lets the lower price still produce viable margins. Economy-positioned ventures operate at higher volumes and lower per-customer margins. The founder’s job is to refuse to add the features and services that would justify a higher price, because adding them moves the venture toward the stuck middle and breaks the economic model.
These are the two positions that work. The third position, “moderate quality at a moderate price,” does not work in most markets, and it works less in African markets specifically because African customers tend to sort themselves more sharply between premium and economy than customers in mature markets do. A premium customer in an African market wants premium clearly, paying for the certainty of quality in an environment where quality is rare. An economy customer in an African market wants the economy clearly, choosing the lowest viable price to stretch a constrained budget. The middle has fewer takers because the conditions that produce middle-market customers (a stable middle class, predictable income, comfort with paying somewhat-more for somewhat-better) are less reliably present.
How the stuck middle kills ventures
The mechanism is unglamorous and slow. The venture launches with vague positioning. Early customers are some mix of price-sensitive and quality-seeking, accepted because revenue is needed. The early customers report mixed reviews because some wanted more quality and some wanted lower prices, and the venture has been delivering neither at full strength.
The founder, looking at the mixed reviews, tries to address both ends. They add some premium features to satisfy the quality-seeking customers, which raises costs. They offer some discounts to satisfy the price-sensitive customers, which lowers revenue. The unit economics, which were marginal at launch, get worse. The customer reviews remain mixed because the additions are not enough to satisfy the quality-seeking customers and the discounts are not deep enough to fully satisfy the price-sensitive ones.
By month eighteen, the venture is operating at lower margins than launch projections, with a customer base that does not reliably refer or repeat, and a positioning that no one in the team can articulate crisply because the positioning has been drifting for a year. The founder feels the venture is losing, but cannot point to a single decision that lost it. The losing was the cumulative effect of refusing to choose, and the refusing extended over a year of small accommodations to customers who should not have been accepted.
The fix is rarely available at this point. The venture has accumulated a customer base, a team, a marketing posture, and an operational footprint calibrated to the stuck middle. Pivoting to premium requires letting go of the price-sensitive customers and rebuilding everything around a higher service level. Pivoting to economy requires letting go of the features that quality-seeking customers like and rebuilding everything around a lower-cost operation. Either pivot is feasible at month six. Both pivots are very difficult at month eighteen, because the venture has built infrastructure, expectations, and customer relationships that the pivot would break.
The expansion strategy
There is one structural way to capture both positions without falling into the stuck middle. The strategy is to operate two distinct brands, each clearly positioned, with separate operational footprints and customer-facing identities. The premium brand serves the quality-seeking segment without contamination from economy compromises. The economy brand serves the price-sensitive segment without distortion from premium expectations. The shared back-office, supply chain, or technology may produce efficiencies, but the customer-facing experience is genuinely separate.
This is harder than it sounds and requires deliberate brand discipline. Customers must not perceive the two brands as the same venture, because the moment they do, the premium brand’s positioning is corroded by the economy brand’s prices and the economy brand’s positioning is undermined by the premium brand’s costs. The internal team must understand which brand they are working on and not let one brand’s habits leak into the other. This is, in my observation, why most ventures that try the two-brand strategy do so badly, and it is why the strategy is best left until the founder has demonstrated the discipline to keep them separate.
The week’s diagnostic
If you are a founder reading this and you suspect you may be in the stuck middle, the diagnostic question to ask yourself this week is concrete. If a customer asked you to summarise, in one sentence, what your venture stands for and which segment of the market you are for, what would you say. If the answer is some version of “good value,” “quality at a fair price,” or “we serve everyone who needs X,” you are in the stuck middle. If the answer is something specific like “we are the premium provider in this category for customers who refuse to compromise” or “we are the most affordable option in this category for customers who need the basic function and nothing else,” you have a real position.
The fix, if you are stuck, is to choose. Pick a position. Give up the customers who do not fit. Rebuild the operation around the chosen position. The choice is uncomfortable because it involves saying no to revenue, but the alternative is the slow disappearance into the stuck middle that has killed more ventures than any single dramatic mistake ever has.
The premium customer and the economy customer both know what they are paying for. The stuck-middle customer does not, and the founder serving them is, in the end, serving no one in particular, which is the position no venture can sustain.
For the broader vision discipline that determines which position your venture takes, see The Vision That Does Work. For the language discipline that betrays the stuck middle most quickly, see Stop Saying Solutions. For the posture of seriously committing to a position rather than drifting into one, see Be the Disruption Before It Reaches You.
