Time between your academic terms offers a window to make steady progress on your startup venture. This short primer provides suggestions on how to get started, as well as some tips to ensure you achieve your goals.
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The Lean Canvas is a framework for distilling down the elements of your startup to a single page. First, identify your customer segment and identify the problems (needs) they have have. Use these needs to help you create a proposed solution with a unique value proposition that the solves the customer's problems so well that they will pay you for it.
📚 Read more about the Lean Canvas.
📝 Register to download a free copy of the template.
The Lean Canvas was created by Ash Maurya and adapted from Alex Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas through creative commons license.
Every customer hires a solution to do a job. For example, customers hire a washing machine to clean their clothes. Reframing the customer's problem as a job to be done can help you think divergently about potential solutions that might address the jobs they seek to accomplish. In the previous example, if we focus on the problem of how to make a better washing machine, then we miss new opportunities to solve the problem for the customer. Framing the problem as a job to do opens up new possibilities, such as a home-pick and delivery laundry service.
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🔨 Founders often think in terms of functional jobs to be done; however, it's important to also consider the social and emotional job that customers are seeking to do.
For example, functionally there is little difference between a Honda Accord and a Toyota Prius—they both transport you and your family from point A to point B. However, Prius buyers make the decision to buy a Prius because they want to feel good about lowering their carbon consumption and they also want to signal to their friends that they are the type of person that cares about the environment.
"A Crown for Every Achievement". A Rolex is not just a timepiece, it's a symbol of status and success.
Ask yourself: What job is the customer hiring a solution to do?
The most powerful story is happening inside your customer's head, a personal narrative of how engaging with your product will transform them into a more powerful, more skillful, more connected version of themselves -Amy Jo Kim
One way to start thinking about jobs to be done is to develop job stories. A job story follows the format of:
WHEN [trigger] - something happens: internal, external, situational
I WANT TO [action] - a small act with a larger purpose
SO I CAN [desired outcome] - the value proposition or payoff
📌 Download the jobs to be done worksheet.
