Customers & Research

Who are my real competitors once I think in jobs to be done?

A starting point

Anything the customer currently 'hires' to get the same job done, including a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group, a competitor, or doing nothing at all. Coffee competes with kale for 'energize my morning'. Your toughest rival is usually the status quo, not another app.

Go deeper

Watch

▶️ Video
Free Beginner

How to Plan an MVP

On Y Combinator Startup Library by Michael Seibel ~15 min

Why we picked it

Michael Seibel's crisp framing of holding the problem and customer tightly while holding the solution loosely, the mindset that keeps competitor and problem research honest. Free and canonical.

  • Hold the problem and customer tightly, the solution loosely
  • Talk to a few users before building, a little research beats none
  • 'No competitors' often signals a weak problem, not a blue ocean
  • Iterating changes the solution; pivoting changes the problem
Open ycombinator.com →

Read

📖 Book
Free Intermediate

When Coffee and Kale Compete: Become great at making products people will buy

From jtbd.info / alanklement.com by Alan Klement ~230 pages

Why we picked it

The most practitioner-friendly deep dive into JTBD, with interviews and case studies on applying it to real products. Free to read and written by a leading JTBD practitioner.

  • A job is the struggle to turn a current situation into a preferred one
  • Seemingly unrelated products (coffee vs kale) compete for the same job
  • Study switching moments, the push and pull that make people change
  • Attach value to what the product does for the customer, not to features
Open alanklement.com →
📄 Article
Free Beginner

Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing

From HBS Working Knowledge by Clayton Christensen (via Harvard Business School) ~8 min read

Why we picked it

The primary-source telling of the milkshake story, the single most memorable illustration of Jobs to Be Done, straight from Christensen and HBS. The best on-ramp to JTBD.

  • Customers 'hire' products to do a job in a specific situation
  • The milkshake was hired to make a boring commute bearable, not just for taste
  • Understand the job, and the right product improvements become obvious
  • Demographics miss the point, situation and job drive purchases
Open library.hbs.edu →

People also ask

What does 'jobs to be done' actually mean? People don't buy products, they 'hire' them to make progress in a specific situation, the famous milkshake was hired to make a boring commute beara... Beginner 2 resources → How is JTBD different from features, personas, or user needs? Personas describe who; JTBD describes the progress they're trying to make and the struggle that pushes them to switch. Features are your answer; th... Intermediate 2 resources → How do I actually uncover the job my customers are hiring my product for? Interview people who recently switched to or bought something in your space and reconstruct the timeline: what triggered the search, what they used... Intermediate 3 resources → How do I turn a job to be done into product and messaging decisions? Write the job as a struggling-moment statement ('when I ___, I want to ___, so I can ___') and use it as the filter for what to build and how to pi... Advanced 2 resources → What if my customers say they have no competitors, is that good or bad? Almost always bad, because it usually means the job isn't painful enough to spend money or effort on. If nobody's built anything, ask what people c... Beginner 2 resources → What actually counts as an MVP, and what's the smallest one I can get away with? An MVP is the least you can build (or fake) to test your single riskiest assumption, not a shrunken version of your dream product. Ask 'what's the ... Beginner 3 resources →