'Companies Want to Be Everything to Everyone': Reggie James on Why Brilliant Tech Companies Fail & A Lack of Strategy
Reggie James
Reggie James
Reggie James 1
Digital Clarity founder featured in Business Online, shares 25 years of unfiltered insights on what C-suite executives get wrong about go-to-market strategy
LONDON, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, November 25, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- In a wide-ranging interview published this week in Business Online, veteran GTM strategist Reggie James delivered the kind of blunt assessment most consultants won't say out loud: "I spent years watching brilliant tech companies completely botch their market entry. Products that should have dominated their space, run by smart people, backed by serious money and they'd launch with positioning that made no sense."
James, who founded Digital Clarity after exiting two tech startups and holding strategy roles at Ziff Davis, VNU, and AltaVista, has built his reputation on a simple premise: most tech companies leave massive amounts of money on the table because they don't treat go-to-market as a strategic discipline.
"They either copy what competitors are doing or they wing it," James told Business Online. "Both approaches are terrible."
Over 25 years advising everyone from startups to Fortune 500 companies, James has identified what he calls the core failure in B2B tech: leaders who confuse activity with progress, optimize for being quoted rather than being effective, and refuse to make the hard choices that define actual strategy.
The traits he values in tech leaders surprise most people:
"The best leaders I've worked with can say 'I don't know' without ego getting in the way," James explained. "They're comfortable being unpopular. Good strategy often means saying no to things that seem like obvious opportunities. The best leaders can absorb the criticism that comes with clear choices."
He's equally direct about what doesn't work: "Most companies want every possible customer segment. They want to compete in every possible dimension. They want to keep all their options open. That's not a strategy, that's the absence of strategy."
On AI, James challenges both the skeptics and the true believers:
"AI has changed everything and nothing," he said. "The companies winning right now use AI to augment human judgment, not replace it. We had a client who'd used AI to analyze their market positioning. The AI gave them perfectly reasonable recommendations that looked like every other company in their space, generic, safe, forgettable."
The breakthrough came from human insight: realizing they weren't competing with other software vendors, but with spreadsheets and manual processes. "That realization changed everything about their positioning. AI helped us get there faster, but it couldn't make that leap."
His advice for aspiring strategists defies conventional wisdom:
"Get close to revenue early. Don't spend years in strategy roles where you never talk to customers or see whether your brilliant ideas actually make money.
Develop a point of view, even if you're wrong. Take positions, make predictions, be willing to be wrong in public, that's how you learn."
And perhaps most controversially: "Understand that most career advice is survivorship bias, including mine. The successful people giving advice often don't know which parts of their success came from skill, luck, or timing."
James now leads Digital Clarity, a wholly owned subsidiary of DBMM Group Inc. (OTC: DBMM), working with B2B tech companies between £5M-£100M in revenue across the UK, Europe, and US. His clients have achieved results including 60%+ ARR growth, though he's quick to note Digital Clarity "doesn't run your ads, build your website, or manage your CRM."
"We do the strategic thinking that sits underneath all of that," he said. "Who exactly are you selling to, and why should they care? Sounds simple. Most companies get this wrong."
James is available for media commentary on B2B go-to-market strategy, AI transformation in marketing, and tech company growth strategy.
Read the full feature: https://businesspress.online/meet-reggie-james/
About Reggie James
Reggie James is founder of Digital Clarity and COO of DBMM Group Inc. (OTC: DBMM). With over 25 years in digital strategy and GTM consulting, he has advised organizations from startups to Fortune 500 companies, with three successful business exits in Singapore and London.
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LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/reggiejames
Digital Clarity: https://digital-clarity.com
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