Hi everyone 👋
I’ve got a question for you: do you want your startup* to succeed?
I guess the answer is a big YES!
Of course.
But what does success really mean?
Money, fame, raise lots of cash, make a nice exit, becoming a leading company…
Well, it depends on what you want to achieve but, as a startup, the first milestone you need to reach to be successful, your #1 goal, is that moment you found Product/Market Fit**.
This means you need a product that can satisfy the market you’re targeting.
In other words, a great value proposition 👌
Any value proposition has two sides:
The problem side 👩🦱
The solution side 📲
On the problem side, there is the customer. This means you need to validate your hypothesis about the customer’s problems (= the problem you want to solve for a particular market segment).
If you’re building a SaaS for other businesses, you will certainly need to address several customer profiles/personas within the same targeted organization(s). In other words, CMO’s and CFO’s don’t have the same problems. Treat them differently. 😉
On the solution side, there is the product and/or services you assumes will solve the customer’s problem: your proposition.
I personally use Strategyzer’s Value Proposition Canvas described in their book “Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want” to document, on the right side, the customers’s needs/problems and, on the left side, the features of the solution I envision to address those needs. 👇
Then the question is “How to create that kind of product/value proposition?”
The answer is… Get out of the building! 🏢
Ok, I agree, this advise from Steve Blank, professor of entrepreneurship at Stanford, initiator of the lean startup movement and co-author of The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company, is not 100% corona-proof 🦠 🤪
On the other hand, it’s the most effective way I know to gather the information you need from the market to build a successful product or service:
At first to validate/perfect your understanding of the customers’s needs
Then to validate that your solution will adequately address those needs
Step 1. Put yourselves in your customer shoes! 👞🩴👠
What does it mean?
In his book, Steve Blank describes the Customer Discovery approach.
This process is about reaching out to potential customers, engaging with them and LISTENING to them.
It aims to let founders or product managers learn about the customer jobs, pains and gains… to perfect their understanding of their customers’s problems.
Getting out of the building doesn’t mean that you cannot reach you target customers from your office.
There are tons of places online where you can find them and start a conversation online. Don’t hesitate to join Facebook groups, to send InMails on Linkedin, … ✉️
Use Zoom, MS Teams or other tools to engage online with you customers!
Strategyzer’s book comes with lots of interview questions that you can copy or adapt.
The Empathy Map Canvas is another great tool to both ask the right questions and document your findings. 👇
During your interviews/conversations, don’t try to sell your solution. Instead, try to understand the deep motivations of your customers. That’s something you’ll be able to use in designing and marketing your solution afterwards.
Why do they do what they do?
I diverted the “5 Whys” technique and sometimes use it during customer interviews to really get to that point.
This technique originates from the industrial world and consists in successively asking “why” 5 times to find the root-cause of a problem.
Example I recently experienced with one of my students:
Me: “You’re on Facebook, right ?”
Her: “Yes, I am”
Me: “Why are you on Facebook?”
Her: “I publish content.”
Me: “Why do you publish content?”
Her: “I want to gain visibility.”
Me: “Why do you want to gain visibility?”
Her: “I want to find customers.” (She’s a freelance)
Me: “Why do you want to find customers?”
Her: “I want to make more money”
Me: “Why do you want to make more money?”
Her: “I want to be free and independent.”
Do you see the potential of leveraging this information?
Step 2. Validate your value proposition with customers
I’ll assume you got back to the office with lots of insights about your customers and that you now perfectly understand who their are and their needs are.
You’ve been very creative and you’ve designed your solution by including a set of nice features that will address individual needs. 👌
Let’s say your target customer is a 20 years old student that live in a big city.
Let’s call him Tom.
Tom is single.
One of the problem you discovered is that Tom has difficulties finding a girlfriend because he’s shy and afraid of rejection. (Yes, you used the 5 whys technique 😉)
OMG, you just re-invented Tinder!!! 😱
Reach out to people similar to Tom and put them in front of your value proposition through…
An online campaign including a targeted ad on Instagram and a landing page describing your value proposition
A prototype of your application you rapidly created for testing purposes
…
How do they react?
Do they ask when it will be available?
Do they click the “Download now” button on your landing page?
If so, you probably validated some of your hypotheses.
If not, don’t worry.
Get out of the building again to gather more insights.
And/or go back to work and iterate on your value proposition.
There never is only one way to solve a customer’s problem!
Greetings 👋
Fabee
PS: Did you like this issue? 🤘 Please share it with your friend to show me you care ❤️
*According to Eric Ries, the author of The Lean Startup: How constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses, and I fully agree, “a startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty”. This clearly means that being a startup has nothing to do with the date of creation of your company. It can be 100 years old and in search of a profitable business model for a new and/or innovative product or service. So, everything you’ve just read in the newsletter proves to be true for your company, big or small, young or old. 👶👨🦳
**According to Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape (the first successful web-browser), co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (a major VC firm based in Silicon Valley) and board member of companies such as Facebook and HPE, reaching “product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”
PS2: Leave a comment 🗣
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Thank you for article, nice refresh on basic principles we often forget!