FOCUS

The two fundamental principles of the lean method are:

1. Declare your victories.
2. People don’t buy products, people buy solutions to problems.

So how can we build a product/service that solves people’s problems? One clear signal that whatever you have built is actively solving people's problems is expressed as product-market fit (PMF).

What satisfies you?

All people live in an attraction/aversion loop. People are passionate about things they are attracted to and averse to the things that bring discomfort/pain.

People (users, customers, developers, builders, etc) are guided by principles. And one core guiding principle for developers is to declare your victories in advance.

Why?

As a developer/builder, we usually attach our passion to the things we're building or coding. But if we build from our principles, we can remain uncommitted to a particular product and service if it doesn't bring us closer to achieving our declared victories.

Ok, so you've declared your victories, what's next? Now we need to commit to solving a problem in a way that lets us realize our declared victories. How can we do that? By making something that achieves product-market fit.

Product market fit means satisfying a market that satisfies you.

Justin Wilcox proposes five assumptions that all products or services that have achieved PMF have managed to answer succesfully.

What follows is a list of the five assumptions and Wilcox's proposed tests to answer each of them:

Finding early adopters test:

Assumption: There are people out there that are trying to solve this problem.

Who are the people that are trying to solve the problem that your solution is also trying to solve, and can you find them?

Use customer interviews to determine how customers describe their problem (marketing copy) and where they go to find solutions (marketing channels).

The customer’s descriptions of the problem will be used as the marketing copy and the places they go to seek the solution will be the marketing channels.

Offer test:

Assumption: I am able to reach those people and describe the problem in a way that makes them want to consider my solution.

Here you find out how prospects are engaging with your offer and how you need to iterate your marketing (copy and channels).

Currency test:

Assumption: People are willing to pay me for the solution.

People will pay you the money you need to achieve your declared victory, if you build this thing/service. Ways to test this is via landing page pre-sales or letters of intent.

Utility test:

Assumption: The solution actually does solve the problem in a way that satisfies the customer.

Can you actually solve people’s problems? In other words, does your product provide value to the user? If it does based on the results of the previous tests, then the next step is to become the solution to the problem by building a manual solution (Minimum Viable Product). It’s easier to take feedback from your customers if your solution is manual rather than automated.

Scaling test:

Assumption: The solution can be automated and scaled.

Now is the time to build software and robots to replace you (the MVP) and automate. It's also good at this stage to reach out to the 2nd or 3rd marketing channels and 2nd or 3rd customer segments.

References:

Focus Framework Website

Interview with Justin Wilcox - Soundcloud

🌳 Evergreen: Revised 7-19-2023