The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win

Since you have developed a complex series of hypotheses, trying to gather all the data on a first customer meeting would be ludicrous.

The goal is to have a single paragraph feature list that can sell to thousands of customers.

Have we identified a problem a customer wants solved? Does our product solve these customer needs? If so, do we have a viable and profitable business model? Have we learned enough to go out and sell?

“If you had a product like this [describe yours in conceptual terms], what percentage of your time could be spent using the product? How mission critical is it? Would it solve the pain you mentioned earlier? What would be the barriers to adopting a product like this?” Since

You need to understand what the analysts believe are the trends, the players, business models, and key metrics.

In reality none of these is the true objective. Simply put, a startup should focus on reaching a deep understanding of customers and their problems, their pains, and the jobs they need done to discover a repeatable roadmap of how they buy, and building a financial model that results in profitability.

If you are creating a new market, or trying to reframe an existing one, you will probably come up with a transformational value proposition. Transformational value propositions deal with how the solution will create a new level or class of activity—i.e. something people could not do before.

How do consumers solve their problems today? How would they solve their problems having your product? Would they be happier? Smarter? Feel better? Do you understand how and what will motivate these customers to buy?

The problems you face occur much earlier than any chasm. In fact, you should be so lucky to be dealing with chasm-crossing activities, for they are a sign of success.

A resegmented market assumes it is going to get customers from an existing market. Draw the existing markets from which you expect to get your customers (remember a market is a set of companies with common attributes.)