Don't build features, build value for someone

Forster Perelsztejn
2 replies
I don't know who needs to read this but I hope my experience can help :) I recently left the startup ecosystem to help an "old-fashioned" company launch a SaaS. They didn't know where they were going because their initial target market -they'd been developing for 2 years- actually couldn't afford the product. So they made a new version of the product, that could appeal to more people and ended up saying "Okay, the product works, but what is it?" -that's pretty much when they hired me. That is totally the wrong question to ask. The right question is "What value does it provide, and to whom?" And if you don't have a clear answer, ask yourself what value you want to provide. From there, we defined a new mission statement. Because you shouldn't build features and try to sell them to people that might need them. You should aim to solve something for someone and build everything accordingly. So that's what my first few weeks here were about :) Has anyone else struggled with positioning before?

Replies

Thanks for sharing!! I think writing down the value and problem you're trying to solve is key. During the "building" phase sometimes it's easy to get sidetracked by other functions/possibilities that seem great (to makers) but don't solve the initial problem written down. Not sure if this is just me though 😅
Forster Perelsztejn
@gabe__perez Hey Gabe, this is exactly what happened here so definitely not just you haha! Glad this resonated with you!