1. Key Building Blocks:
Value Proposition
Customer Segments
Bob Dorf
bob@kandsranch.com

2. VALUE PROPOSITIONS
what are you offering them? what is that getting
done for them? do they care?
images by JAM

3. Step 1. Spec. the Value Proposition
• Product(s)?
• Service(s)?
• Ecosystem?
• Is it a company or product?

4. Value Proposition – Common Mistake
• Is it just a feature of someone else’s product
• Is it a “nice to have” product
• Is it a “got to have” product
• Can it scale to a company?
• …THE IMPORTANCE OF ENTHUSIASM
– It’s viral thus economical
– It’s the only road to success
– Find it NOW, not after you build!

5. Value Proposition - Discovery
• Product
– Long term vision
– features
– Benefits
– Minimum Viable Product spec
• For a web/mobile app
– Low fidelity MVP live and running
• Understand Customer Problem and Solution
• Test Market Type

6. Product
• Problem Statement: What is the problem?
• Technology / Market Insight: Why is the problem so
hard to solve?
• Market Size: How big is this problem?
• Competition: Where does your product fit in the world?
What do customers do today?
Why would they buy from you instead of…..
» at do customers do today?
• Product: How do you do it? How do you make it?

7. Step 2: What’s the Minimum Viable
Product – Physical
• First, test your understanding of the problem
• Next test your understanding of the solution
– Proves that it solves a core problem for customers
– The minimum set of features needed to learn from
earlyvangelists
- Interviews, demos, prototypes, etc
- Lots of eyeball contact

8. Step 2: What’s the Minimum Viable
Product – Web/Mobile
• NOW “low fidelity” web/app for customer feedback
– First, tests your understanding of the problem
• LATER, “high fidelity” web/app tests your understanding
of the solution
– Proves that it solves a core problem for customers
– The minimum set of features needed to learn from
earlyvangelists
- Avoid building products nobody wants
- Maximize the learning per time spent

9. Step 2: What’s Testing the Minimum
Viable Product – Web/Mobile
• Smoke testing with landing pages using AdWords
• In-product split-testing
• Prototypes (particularly for hardware)
• Removing features
• Continued customer discovery and validation
• Surveys
• Interviews

10. Step 2: What’s the Testing the MVP–
Web/Mobile - Tactics
• Interview customers
– make sure they have a matching core problem
• Set up web site landing page to test for conversion
– What offers are required to get customers to use the product
(e.g. prizes, payment)
– Use problem definition as described by customers to identify key
word list – plug into Google search traffic estimator - high traffic
means there is problem awareness
• Drive traffic to site using Google search and see how
deep into a registration process customers are willing to
go through

11. CUSTOMER SEGMENTS
which customers and users are you serving? which
jobs do they really want to get done?
images by JAM

12. Corporate? Consumer?
• Business to Business (B to B)
– Use or buy inside a company
• Business to Consumer (B to C)
– Use or buy for themselves
• Business to Business to Consumer (B to B to C)
– Sell a business to get to a consumer
– Other Multi-sided Markets with multiple customers

13. Customer Types
• Saboteurs
• Intermediaries (OEM’s and resellers)

14. Market Type & Ignoring Customers
• Clone Market?
• Existing Market?
• Resegmenting an Existing Market?
– niche or low cost
• New Market?
• When do I ignore customer feedback?

15. General Heuristics
• You need to talk to more customers than you
ever thought possible – 100’s physically, 1000’s
on the web
• Don’t ever forget face-to-faceWEB contact:
you need to see them smile, get lost, mess up
• “I left a message” or “I sent an email” doesn’t
count – it’s confusing motion with action
• Do NOT start at the top. You only get one
meeting. You’ll almost certainly look like an idiot
– First figure out the order of battle

16. B-to-B Customers
Business to Business (B to B)

17. What do they want you to do?
• Increase revenue?
• Decrease costs?
• Get them new customers?
• Keep up with or pass competitors?
• How important is it?
• Problem or a Need?

18. Customer Problem

19. Customer Problem

20. Customer Problem

21. Customer Problem

22. Customer Problem

23. Customer Problem

24. Who’s the Customer in a Company?
• User?
• Influencer?
• Recommender?
• Decision Maker?
• Economic Buyer?
• Saboteur?
• Archetypes for each?

25. How Do They Interact to Buy?
• Organization Chart
• Influence Map
• Sales Road Map

26. Pass/Fail Signals & Experiments
• How do you test interest?
• Where do you test interest?
• What kind of experiments can you run?
• How many do you test?

27. How Do They Hear About You?
• Demand Creation
• Network effect
• Sales

28. If It’s a Multi-sided Market
Diagram It!!

31. buzz
group

32. Consumer Customers
Business to Consumer (B to C)

33. What do they want you to do?
• Does it entertain them?
• Does it connect them with others?
• Does it make their lives easier?
• Does it satisfy a basic need?
• How important is it?
• Can they afford it?

34. Archetypes

35. buzz
group

36. Consumer Customers
• Do they buy it by themselves?
• Do they need approval of others?
• Do they use it alone or with others?

37. How Do They Decide to Buy?
• Demand Creation
• Viral?
• SEO/SEM
• Network effect?
• AARRR (Dave McClure)

38. Pass/Fail Signals & Experiments
• How do you test interest?
• Where do you test interest?
• What kind of experiments can you run?
• How many do you test?

39. The Consumer Sales Channel
• A product that’s bits can use the web
• But getting a physical consumer product into
retail distribution is hard
• Is Wal-Mart a customer?

40. Multi-Sided Markets
Business to Business to Consumer
(B to B to C)

41. Who’s The Customer?
• Consumer End Users, Corporate Customers
Pay
• Multiple Consumers
• Multiple, Distinct Discovery efforts
• Beware “false positives”
• Follow the people…then follow the money

42. Multiple Customer Segments
• Each has its own Value Proposition
• Each has its own Revenue Stream
• One segment cannot exist without the other
• Which one do you start with?

43. Market Type

44. Definitions: Four Types of Markets
Clone Market Existing Market Resegmented New Market
Market
• Clone Market
– Copy of a U.S. business model
• Existing Market
– Faster/Better = High end
• Resegmented Market
– Niche = marketing/branding driven
– Cheaper = low end
• New Market
– Cheaper/good enough, creates a new class of product/customer
– Innovative/never existed before

45. Market Type
Existing Resegmented New
Customers Known Possibly Known Unknown
Customer Performance Better fit Transformational
Needs improvement
Competitor Many Many if wrong, None
s few if right
Risk Lack of branding, Market and Evangelism and
sales and distribution product re- education cycle
ecosystem definition
Examples Google Southwest Groupon
Market Type determines:
 Rate of customer adoption
 Sales and Marketing strategies
 Cash requirements

46. Market Type - Existing
• Incumbents exist, customers can name the mkt
• Customers want/need better performance
• Usually technology driven
• Positioning driven by product and how much value
customers place on its features
• Risks:
– Incumbents will defend their turf
– Network effects of incumbent
– Continuing innovation

47. Market Type – Resementing Existing
• Low cost provider (Southwest)
• Unique niche via positioning (Whole Foods)
• What factors can:
– you eliminate that your industry has long competed on?
– Be reduced well below the industry’s standard?
– should be raised well above the industry’s standard?
– be created that the industry has never offered? (blue ocean)

48. Market Type – New
• Customers don’t exist today
• How will they find out about you?
• How will they become aware of their need?
• How do you know the market size is compelling?
• Which factors should be created that the industry has
never offered? (blue ocean)

49. Target Market
• Who am I going to sell to?
• Airports
• How large is the market be (in $’s)?
Total Served Target • $100 M
Available Available
Market
Market Market • How many units would that be?
$4.8 B $1 B
$100 M
• 200 M units

50. QUESTIONS?