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Over the last two months, I participated in a number of meetings with founders of startups – as an adviser, reviewer or investor. Interestingly in nearly every one of these meetings the same questions kept coming up.
In particular four different companies – two nascent startups and a couple in their early tweens – were facing eerily similar issues. Despite the startups being in very different spaces, the varying ages of their endeavors and having smart and motivated founders – they were all trying to come to grips with the lack of market traction. This despite a great deal of time spent talking to prospective customers, partners, building and launching working prototypes.
I must admit after the first couple of meetings it appeared they were having different problems. In one, a marketplace that was not getting suppliers nor buyers off the starting block, in another focusing on the technology to the exclusion of all else, and yet another having a solution looking for a problem. However, by the time the fourth meeting rolled around it was plenty clear, that all of them required a sharp focus on answering the question
“Who is your target customer?”
and more importantly,
“What pain are you trying to solve for them?”
Two years into our own start-up, we find ourselves returning to this question with reasonable – some would say troubling – frequency. When we got started on dog-earz, the newsletter tool for the rest of us, we defined our target customers as “marketing & sales folks in SMBs” and the pain we were trying to solve for them was How to keep in meaningful touch with everyone in your Rolodex, even if there wasn’t a deal on the horizon.
Of course, it helps, if your target customers actually exist (ours did) and are accessible (a little more difficult) and truly felt this as a problem (not clear). Our solution seemed more a nice-to-have vitamin rather than make-my-pain-go-away Aspirin. We hung in there, as we felt we were target users ourselves. With time it was clear that we’d better solve their pain rather than imagine that they will behave the way we’d. Seems obvious in hindsight, doesn’t it?
Things are not always as evident as we’d like them. I once had an opportunity to talk to Phanindra Sama, founder of redBus.in about his understanding of what pain they are solving for their customers. Phanindra shared his view that the pain his customers felt was not in purchasing bus tickets – as I’d have thought. In fact it might still be more convenient for a traveler to call someone to hold a ticket and pay for it at time of boarding – only one phone call needed, but it is the absence of reliable information – as in how many buses, when and at what price or location will leave from Bangalore to Chennai (or better yet from Jalandhar to New Delhi?) that was the customers’ pain point.
Ask yourself these two questions, repeatedly and validate them by getting out of the office and asking your target customers about their pain points. Once you nail this down it makes, at the very least, decision-making a whole lot easier. Knowing this is of course only a good start, but not knowing can kill your business.
Great article. It is surprising how few of us ask the obvious questions of the customer and the pain point we are trying to solve. Additionally i think folks should ask what is the benefit the customer would like to see through the solution – this helps measure how successful the solution is in solving the pain point – Deepa Bachu @Intuit
Deepa, thanks for the comment. It’s a good idea to get the customer to quantify the pain (or the size of benefit, as you put it), so that we know how to measure our solution. Can save us a case of too broad or too narrow a solution neither of which the customer way value. And sometimes when you ask the customer to quantify the pain, they may either talk themselves out of it, or realize indeed how big a deal it is.
Hi Sri,
This article hits the nail right on its head. Couple of more thoughts:-
* Solving a pain can introduce new pains (hence opportunities) – digital cameras solved the pain of operational cost, processing time associated with film based cameras. But they also introduced the pain of managing expontentially higher number of photos & videos. Vechicles solved the pain of moving from point A to B but also introduced traffic and parking woes.
* I think there is also another class of businesses that succeed by taking customer experiences to next level – e.g, motion controlled Wii games, Apple UI/product designs. I believe people were not complaining about lack of these but these businesses exposed customers to a new set of experiences and rest is history. It is like someone opening the door of a room filled with treasures which people didn’t even know that such a room existed in the first place.
Cheers,
Selva.
Hi Sri,
This article hits the nail right on its head. Couple of more thoughts:-
* Solving a pain can introduce new pains (hence opportunities) – digital cameras solved the pain of operational cost, processing time associated with film based cameras. But they also introduced the pain of managing expontentially higher number of photos & videos. Vechicles solved the pain of moving from point A to B but also introduced traffic and parking woes.
* I think there is also another class of businesses that succeed by taking customer experiences to next level – e.g, motion controlled Wii games, Apple UI/product designs. I believe people were not complaining about lack of these but these businesses exposed customers to a new set of experiences and rest is history. It is like someone opening the door of a room filled with treasures which people didn’t even know that such a room existed in the first place.
Cheers,
Selva.
Selva, good point on each pain reliever potentially introducing new pains. Often these new pains may be for new(er) customers – such as traffic & parking woes you speak of – which in turn are new opportunities (for other entrepreneurs?)
The only minor disagreement I’d have with the examples you cite – “no one asked for the iPad or a mini-van” the most common cited example of unmet (and unaware) needs people had, is that these were pain points for which the customers would not have been able to cite a solution – but still knew their problems – “Computers/smart phones are so hard to use” or “I wish I had a vehicle that I can use to take 5-8 kids to games as well as take my family out” – thanks for your inputs.
Selva, good point on each pain reliever potentially introducing new pains. Often these new pains may be for new(er) customers – such as traffic & parking woes you speak of – which in turn are new opportunities (for other entrepreneurs?)
The only minor disagreement I’d have with the examples you cite – “no one asked for the iPad or a mini-van” the most common cited example of unmet (and unaware) needs people had, is that these were pain points for which the customers would not have been able to cite a solution – but still knew their problems – “Computers/smart phones are so hard to use” or “I wish I had a vehicle that I can use to take 5-8 kids to games as well as take my family out” – thanks for your inputs.
Deepa, thanks for the comment. It’s a good idea to get the customer to quantify the pain (or the size of benefit, as you put it), so that we know how to measure our solution. Can save us a case of too broad or too narrow a solution neither of which the customer way value. And sometimes when you ask the customer to quantify the pain, they may either talk themselves out of it, or realize indeed how big a deal it is.
Deepa, thanks for the comment. It’s a good idea to get the customer to quantify the pain (or the size of benefit, as you put it), so that we know how to measure our solution. Can save us a case of too broad or too narrow a solution neither of which the customer way value. And sometimes when you ask the customer to quantify the pain, they may either talk themselves out of it, or realize indeed how big a deal it is.
Selva, good point on each pain reliever potentially introducing new pains. Often these new pains may be for new(er) customers – such as traffic & parking woes you speak of – which in turn are new opportunities (for other entrepreneurs?)
The only minor disagreement I’d have with the examples you cite – “no one asked for the iPad or a mini-van” the most common cited example of unmet (and unaware) needs people had, is that these were pain points for which the customers would not have been able to cite a solution – but still knew their problems – “Computers/smart phones are so hard to use” or “I wish I had a vehicle that I can use to take 5-8 kids to games as well as take my family out” – thanks for your inputs.
Selva, good point on each pain reliever potentially introducing new pains. Often these new pains may be for new(er) customers – such as traffic & parking woes you speak of – which in turn are new opportunities (for other entrepreneurs?)
The only minor disagreement I’d have with the examples you cite – “no one asked for the iPad or a mini-van” the most common cited example of unmet (and unaware) needs people had, is that these were pain points for which the customers would not have been able to cite a solution – but still knew their problems – “Computers/smart phones are so hard to use” or “I wish I had a vehicle that I can use to take 5-8 kids to games as well as take my family out” – thanks for your inputs.