This lecture focuses on the process of creating a crisp and concise value proposition for your start-up. Learn how to answer the essential question, “What is the value you bring to your customers?” without describing the details of your technology. Formulating a good value proposition is an essential step for any start-up and lies at the core of many of the other tools entrepreneurs need to develop, including market analysis, business modeling, finding funding and delivering an investor or customer pitch.

1. "
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Joseph Wilson
@joeatmars
jwilson@marsdd.com

3. Agenda
What is a value proposition?
Examples
Mission Statement
Elevator Pitch
Tag line
Positioning Statement
Metaphors

5. How to (not) articulate value:

6. A note on language:
You are a translator
volatile organic compounds
cache-coherence
DRM, LAMP
monetize
incentivize
osteoblast
service-dependent sublayer
X

7. A note on language:
Show, don’t tell
amazing
state of the art
revolutionary
groundbreaking
awesome
landmark
innovative
sensational
breath-taking
disruptive
cutting edge
ideation
X

8. A value proposition is a
statement of the unique benefits
delivered by your offering to the
target customer

9. A value proposition is a
hypothesis that your offering will
bring certain values to a target
customer. *
* Like any hypothesis, it needs to be
rigorously tested in the lab (read: with
customers) before money is put into
scaling.

10. Value Proposition is Not:
A tag-line
A mission statement
An elevator pitch
A positioning statement
A positioning metaphor

11. Mission
statement
Tag-line
Metaphor
Value Proposition
Elevator
Pitch
Positioning
statement

12. Marketing
Marketing
Marketing
Core Thesis
Marketing
Marketing

13. Mission
statement
Tag-line
Metaphor
Value Proposition
Elevator
Pitch
Positioning
statement

14. The value proposition statement
should consist of these components:
1. What your product/service is
2. The target customer
3. The value you provide them
Emergent property: why your
product is unique

15. Examples:
What is it?
For whom?
Values?
Good: “Winners is a
department store that
offers fashion conscious
consumers the latest
brand names for up to 60
per cent off.” (Winners)
Bad: “Winners is an
off-price department
store owned by TJX
that employs
international
sourcing and buying
power.”

16. Examples:
What is it?
For whom?
Values?
Good: “Winners is a
department store that
offers fashion conscious
consumers the latest
brand names for up to 60
per cent off.” (Winners)
Bad: “Winners is an
off-price department
store owned by TJX
that employs
international
sourcing and buying
power.”

17. Examples:
What is it?
For whom?
Values?
Good: “A1 Industries has
developed an economical and
easy-to-use chemical additive that
allows paint manufacturing
companies to reduce the
environmental impact of their
products
Bad: “A1 Industries
has discovered a
chemical isomer
additive that allows
for a reduction of
VOC emissions.”

18. Examples:
What is it?
For whom?
Values?
Good: “A1 Industries has
developed an economical and
easy-to-use chemical additive
that allows paint manufacturing
companies to reduce the
environmental impact of their
products
Bad: “A1 Industries
has discovered a
chemical isomer
additive that allows
for a reduction of
VOC emissions.”

19. Examples:
What is it?
For whom?
Values?
Good: “Google is the world’s
largest search engine that
allows internet users to find
relevant information
quickly and easily.”
Bad: “Google uses a
patented pageranking algorithm to
make money through
ad placement.”

20. Examples:
What is it?
For whom?
Values?
Good: “Google is the
world’s largest search
engine that allows internet
users to find relevant
information quickly and
easily.”
Bad: “Google uses a
patented pageranking algorithm to
make money through
ad placement.”
Are Internet Users really Google’s customers?

21. Examples:
What is it?
For whom?
Values?
Good: “Google is the world’s
largest search engine that
automatically provides
advertisers with potential
customers tailored to the ad
content, increasing click-through
rates and conversion rates.”
Bad: “Google uses a
patented pageranking algorithm to
make money through
ad placement.”

22. Selling to
Customer
Usability
Health
Aesthetics
Selling to
Business
Lower risk
Saving time
Status
Saving/making money
Newness
Enabling function
Self-Actualization
Convenience
Environmental
Quality
Ethical
Social
Inclusion
Customizable

23. Value Prop Template:
For _____target audience________,
__company name_______ has
created __product name___
that results in ___value 1_________,
__value 2____, ____value 3__.

24. Mission
statement
Tag-line
Metaphor
Value Proposition
Elevator
Pitch
Positioning
statement

25. Elevator pitch: A 60 second quick
pitch that describes the business.
Hook
Problem
Solution (value prop-ish)
Unique Features
Call to action

26. The Hook:
“I buy dead magazines…”
“We make conferences not boring….”
“We sell 15 minute vacations…”
The Problem:
“What do you mean?”
“Paper based magazines are failing…”
“Conferences are usually based on one-way lectures….”
“People’s commute to work is stressful…”

27. The solution:
“We buy up print magazines that are failing and reinvent
them on the web as digital publications. For traditional
small magazine publishers my company Solid Media
provides an online template called digipub which
repurposes their print material for online consumption at
lower cost and opens up their content to a new crop of
advertisers.

28. The solution:
What is it?
For whom?
Values?
“We buy up print magazines that are failing and reinvent
them on the web as digital publications. For traditional
small magazine publishers my company Solid Media
provides an online template called digipub which
repurposes their print material for online consumption at
lower cost and opens up their content to a new crop of
advertisers.

29. The solution:
“We buy up print magazines that are failing and reinvent
them on the web as digital publications. For traditional
small magazine publishers my company XYZ Media
provides a platform called digipub which repurposes their
print material for online consumption at lower cost and
opens up their content to a new crop of advertisers.
Unique features:
“We add the e-magazines metadata into our recommendation
engine, kind of like Amazon, which brings in new readers.”
Call-to-action:
“Hmmm, good idea”
“We’re signing up beta customers now to play around with the
platform and tell us what they think. Check it out” [hands out
business card]

30. Mission
statement
Tag-line
Metaphor
Value Proposition
Elevator
Pitch
Positioning
statement

31. Positioning statement: a value
proposition plus a competitive
anchor.
For traditional small magazine publishers my
company Solid Media provides a template
called digipub which repurposes their print
material for online consumption at lower cost
and opens up their content to a new crop of
advertisers. Unlike Press Publisher 4.0,
digipub adds metadata to your content,
connecting you with new readers and new
advertisers.

32. Positioning statement: a value
proposition plus a competitive
anchor.
For traditional small magazine publishers my
company Solid Media provides a template
called digipub which repurposes their print
material for online consumption at lower cost
and opens up their content to a new crop of
advertisers. Unlike Wordpress, digipub is for
magazine publishers alone to repurpose their
content and discover new readers online.

33. Mission
statement
Tag-line
Metaphor
Value Proposition
Elevator
Pitch
Positioning
statement

34. Metaphor: a way to anchor your
brand to something people
already understand
“digipub is like Shopify for magazines.”
“digipub is to the magazine industry what Kobo
is for books.”
“digipub is like Wordpress for Magazines.
“digipub combines the metadata from Amazon
with the templates in Wordpress specifically for
magazine publishers.”

35. Mission
statement
Tag-line
Metaphor
Value Proposition
Elevator
Pitch
Positioning
statement

36. Tagline: a marketing line to accompany
your brand name
“digipub: Reimagine Your Magazine.”
“digipub: Print is Dead. Long Live Print.”
“digipub: Follow Your Readers Online.”
“digipub: Bits are Cheaper Than Pages.”
“digipub: Where Magazines Live Online.”
2
3
4
5
1

37. Mission
statement
Tag-line
Metaphor
Value Proposition
Elevator
Pitch
Positioning
statement

38. Mission statement: a statement of the
purpose of your business.
“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s
information and make it universally accessible and
useful.”
“Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to
share and make the world more open and
connected.”
“Solid Media’s mission is to connect curious readers
to the very best written content on the web.”

39. The sound-bite cheat sheet
Value Prop
Magazine
industry
End readers
Media
“For magazine
publishers…”
“For magazine
readers…”
“For magazine
readers…”
Elevator
Pitch
“I buy dead
magazines…”
“Did you used to read a
magazine that went out
of print?...”
“Just last week we
saw in the news…”
Positioning
“Unlike Print
Publisher…”
“Unlike print
magazines”
“Unlike print
magazines”
Metaphors
“…like Print
Shopify”
“like Wordpress…”
“like Wordpress…”
Stats
“ROI in 4 months” “3,500 magazines
online waiting to be
discovered…”
“40% print media
out of business”

40. Joseph Wilson
@joeatmars
jwilson@marsdd.com