First, I want to thank @Envision for his great thread "Building a Billion Dollar Enterprise". It's full of nuggets and I can recommend all newcomers to read it.
One of his pieces of advice that are actionable for everyone was to use platforms such as MeetUp to get in touch with like-minded people.
I followed his advice and have been joining a couple of events already in which I learned new ideas and had interesting conversations.
Yesterday I was attending an event with Johnny Quach CPO/CMO @Hostelworld, talking about the most important step at the beginning of building a business.
His mantra is to obsess over the problem and neglect all other aspects when starting from scratch.
Since he brought up interesting ideas, I wanted to share the most relevant interesting one here.
The story of Clay Christensen is an excellent example of what direction Quach was pointing with his talk.
A company wants to improve sales of milkshakes. They do what we all do—they ask customers about the aspects of the milkshake.
It's breakfast for commuters that have long drives, already are dressed for work, can't get crumbs on their clothes, and need the sugar pickup (plus something to do on the drive).
Fast forward, focusing on the problem that appears as a problem at first glance won’t drive sales in many circumstances. The key is discovering the real job, the shake is solving (Keeping customers busy while driving) that will give trajectory to sales.
In their situation making the shake thicker and thus last an entire commute was the solution.
Another example is Tinder:
Tinder isn’t so successful by being better in bringing people together than other dating apps but being the best among them in providing a platform that users want to use when feeling bored by getting excited about the “Power or Expectations” to date someone by swiping through the images. The dates themselves are secondary here.
My Main Takeaway:
Don’t rush through the problem identification phase in the beginning when you think that you discovered a problem otherwise in many cases you’re tapping in the dark and wasting time on solving something that isn’t a real problem.
One of his pieces of advice that are actionable for everyone was to use platforms such as MeetUp to get in touch with like-minded people.
I followed his advice and have been joining a couple of events already in which I learned new ideas and had interesting conversations.
Yesterday I was attending an event with Johnny Quach CPO/CMO @Hostelworld, talking about the most important step at the beginning of building a business.
His mantra is to obsess over the problem and neglect all other aspects when starting from scratch.
Since he brought up interesting ideas, I wanted to share the most relevant interesting one here.
The story of Clay Christensen is an excellent example of what direction Quach was pointing with his talk.
A company wants to improve sales of milkshakes. They do what we all do—they ask customers about the aspects of the milkshake.
- Should it be sweeter?
- Should it come in more flavors?
- Do you want it in larger sizes?
It's breakfast for commuters that have long drives, already are dressed for work, can't get crumbs on their clothes, and need the sugar pickup (plus something to do on the drive).
Fast forward, focusing on the problem that appears as a problem at first glance won’t drive sales in many circumstances. The key is discovering the real job, the shake is solving (Keeping customers busy while driving) that will give trajectory to sales.
In their situation making the shake thicker and thus last an entire commute was the solution.
Another example is Tinder:
Tinder isn’t so successful by being better in bringing people together than other dating apps but being the best among them in providing a platform that users want to use when feeling bored by getting excited about the “Power or Expectations” to date someone by swiping through the images. The dates themselves are secondary here.
My Main Takeaway:
Don’t rush through the problem identification phase in the beginning when you think that you discovered a problem otherwise in many cases you’re tapping in the dark and wasting time on solving something that isn’t a real problem.
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