Three Things (AKA Your Core Value Proposition)

I just came across this post by Paul Buchheit. In it, he talks about how you should focus on doing three things extremely well. If you can succeed at that, people will use your product, and you can build the rest later.

I've been working on a new startup with a new team (more on that later), and we're trying to nail down the product. When I came in, we started talking about getting out the minimum viable product. One of my cofounders has been working on the product for quite some time, and he already had a demo up, but for various reasons, we essentially started from scratch. So we mapped out the "minimum viable product," and started building.

Sounds good so far, but there were some issues. The first was a lack of customer development (I need to talk about that more later), but more importantly, the minimum viable product was defined in functional terms. So, for example, if the product were a task list (it isn't), the MVP would be:

1) add task
2) check off task
3) edit task

The problem with this is that we didn't define the MVP in terms of any sort of core value proposition. When I thought about it (after about a month of hacking), I realized that what we were building differed significantly from the original stated vision. We were building something that didn't really accomplish any of our key goals (as I understood them). Sure, it was usable, but it seemed like a compromise. To be completely honest, I was unconvinced that people would want to use what we were building (this became more obvious once we started talking to real customers).

So we started talking about our core value proposition, and how we were going to deliver on it. I came across Paul's blog post later, but it actually simplifies a lot of what we have been talking about. You have to focus on defining and delivering a few key features. These features should differentiate you from everything else that is out there. If you trying to be all things to all people, you don't make anyone happy. I have heard nerds gush about all of the features that Archos puts into their media players. The problem is that I don't know anyone who actually owns an Archos (whereas most people seem to own an iPod or iPhone). I don't want an Archos. It fails to create a compelling core value proposition.

So three actually seems like a good number of core features. It is enough to give your product some definition, but not so much that you try to do everything. It is actually an interesting exercise to limit yourself to three features, especially if you are an engineer "but it would only take ten minutes to add one more thing".

So what would be a compelling core value feature set for our hypothetical task list product? (I'm actually building this as a side project).

1) Makes it super easy to enter your tasks from anywhere
2) Uncluttered and simple interface that is accessible from any device
3) Bugs you relentlessly to complete the things that you put on your list

Now that I think about it, I accomplished goals 1) and 2) relatively quickly, but didn't focus on 3). The interface became cluttered with features, but not the one that mattered. Recently, I have slid into not using my own product. I'm going to refocus on my core value proposition, and hopefully I will get back to creating something that is useful for me.

I would actually argue that, of your three features, one has to be a draw, one has to become immediately obvious once people start using it, and one functions to keep users coming back. With the iPod, people bought it either because it was easy to use (simple interface, easy syncing with the mac) or because it had a large capacity. Once they started using it, the other features became obvious ("wow. I can store all my music on this" or "wow. this is easy to use"). I would argue that the stickiness was that it was small. You could effortlessly carry it with you (especially the iPod mini and Nano). Unlike a portable CD player (and the hard drive-based mp3 players of the time looked like a CD player), it fit in your pocket.

What are your product's three features?