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Understand your customers

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

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

3 resources, 3 link-checked.

📖 Book
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

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.

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

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

  • 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
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

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.

Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing

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

  • 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 →
▶️ Video
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

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.

How to Plan an MVP

On Y Combinator Startup Library by Michael Seibel ~15 min

  • 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 →

Terms in this answer

Jobs to Be Done

People also ask

What does 'jobs to be done' actually mean? 2 → How is JTBD different from features, personas, or user needs? 2 → How do I actually uncover the job my customers are hiring my product for? 3 → How do I turn a job to be done into product and messaging decisions? 2 → How many customer interviews do I need before I trust the job I've found is real? 3 → Customers say they want feature X, but is that the job or just a solution they've imagined? 3 →

Also in How Founders Use AI

How founders actually use AI for this, over in Market Research.

How do founders validate a startup idea with AI in a weekend? 20 → How do I use AI to map competitors, pricing, and positioning? 22 →

Also in GTM

The same ground, over in Who you sell to, and why they care, our GTM track.

What is an ICP and how is it different from a persona? People use both words for the same thing. 4 → What is positioning in plain English, and why does everyone insist we have got it wrong? 3 →
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