Product Discovery with Jobs To Be Done

------There are a ton of books (which I didn't read) about building a StartUp, building a successful business and becoming an irresistible CEO. You just need to follow the plan. And you might ask: Ina, Ina, what is the plan? Good question my friend. All the books say: "Everything starts with an idea", the rule is simple here:

Innovative idea + hard work + a milion other factors = A great StartUp

------Well, the first part of the equation (can I call it an equation?) is the hardest for me. WTF is an idea? How can I get it? Can I buy it please? Or should I stay all my life under a tree and wait for The Apple to fall on my head, and "Evrica!" - a genius StartUp idea just poped up in my head. I guess it doesn't work this way. Ok, enough with the introduction. In this article I will describe the process that my team went through to find a StartUp idea (no apples involved). Get comfortable, or not, and enjoy the 3 minutes read.

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Phase 1
Market Research & Competitor Analysis
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Phase 2:
JTBD Interviews with B2C & B2B segment
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Phase 3:
Product hypothesis creation & finding The Idea
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Choosing one field to focus on

Phase 1: Market Research & Competitor Analysis

------To run a general market diagnostics is not efficient, we needed to focus on a niche. Our goal was to validate a product idea that help people find local service providers like cleaners, nail artists, maids, electricians, air conditioning experts, teachers/ tutots, plumbers etc. Our Definition Of Done in the first phase was to run a detailed competitors analysis, to identify potential strengths for our future product and to evaluate TAM, SAM, SOM.
------We did all of the above, and found some pretty strong competiros, with an amzing UI/UX, great Business Model (or so we thought), powerful marketing campaign. But people were not using it, why? (we found out the answer to this question after phase 2).

------Phase 1 Output: SWOT analysis of our direct and indirect competitors, demographic forecasts for 5-10 years, market size.

Trying to understand what ”job” needs to be done

Phase 2: Qualitative Research, introducing JTBD

------Lets continue the pipeline. Having the output from the previous phase, we needed to deep dive into the field. Why do people look for a plumber? What is their goal? What websites do they visit? A lot of questions and we couldn’t pretend taht we know the answer to them. So we decided to ask people, to organize a 30-40 minutes long interview based on Jobs To Be Done methodology. We already know that people don’t buy products, they hire them to get a job done. For example, when my wedding is coming up, I have a new job: to plan my honeymoon somewhere in Greece. Nice! I can hire an online booking service do get the job done, or a travel agency, or I can force my husband to get the job done for me :)

Trigger: Wedding coming up

What trigegred me to start getting the job done? What happened? In what circumstance?

Job: Plan the honeymoon

What was my main goal? How can I merge all of my tasks into one Verb + Context prase

Solution: Home booking service

What products I hired to get the job done? Why I didn’t hire specific products?

------Phase 2 Output: 10 interviews with B2C segment and 5 interviews with B2B segment. Each interview was transcribed and analysed. A board with all extracted artifacts was created for each interview.

Combining & brainstorming on product ideas

Phase 3: Product hypothesis creation & finding ”The Idea”

------Well, at this phase you just look at all teh artifacts that your team gathered at phase 2 and wait untill a product idea will pop up into your head, 6 years later maybe you will be successfully hit by an apple and ”Evrika”, go find an angel to invest in your start-up.
------Not easy, not easy. At this stage, to avoid waiting for 6 years, we looked at the main jobs our potential customers were trying to get done:
------------1. They have differents jobs, with different context
------------2. They go through some similar steps in the process of getting the job done

------Not easy, Looking at our JTBD artifacts in this way, helped us to understand that we can choose different strategies.
------------- Maybe we will create a product that a customer will hire to get 100% a job done. For example, a service that helps you plan from A to Z your honeymoon in Greece.
------------- Or, we can create a product that customers with different main jobs will hire to get it partially done. For example, a service where you can enter address of hotel, hostel, villa, and you will get the real pictures from inside the house.

------Phase 3 Output: other 15 product ideas that our team prioritized and some of them can be taken into teh next step: quantitative validation of product idea.... drum roll required... introducing: Growth Hacking.