12 Feb Start a Business – Revision
Feb 12, 2025
In the last few articles, we talked about identifying a customer’s problem and a solution for that problem. We also discussed finding the right market fit and business model that will bring you stable revenue, making your business sustainable. Lastly, we built your customer’s profile, and I explained the importance of conducting interviews with your potential customers.
You can check all articles here:
However, our journey to starting a business has not finished yet! There are more steps to go through. We need to write down our one-sentence pitch, define our value proposition, and put all the information in a business plan. Only then can we move into actions.
But before that, let’s make a short summary of everything we have done so far! That summary will be helpful because it will refresh your mind and provide clarity on where we are and where we are headed.
Problem/Solution
Your business is built on solving a problem that a person or a group of people have.
The problem someone experiences causes “pain” or discomfort — physical or mental — which triggers the desire to seek a solution. The stronger that desire is, the more the person will search for you.
Let me give you a simple example. If I am in the desert and I am desperately thirsty, I’ll give everything to find water.
Be sure that you’ve identified a real problem and a good solution.
Business Model Fit
The next step we already finished is to answer this simple question:
Is there a way to scale my business to a sustainable model that can earn money in the long term?
See, you may have identified a real problem and a solution, but if you don’t earn enough money, it simply doesn’t make sense to invest a penny in this business.
Even if you have finished that exercise already, do it again. Conduct a double-check.
Write down all of your expenses, resources, and the location of your business if it is a physical one, etc. Next, conduct a thought experiment. Imagine your business operating and ask yourself questions like: What may go wrong? What may stop me from earning enough money?
If the thought experiment is successful, move on. If not, abandon it.
Customer Profile
You now know the problem you solve, you have the solution, and you know that you can earn a sustainable income. However, you need to know who you’re selling to.
In the previous exercises, you prepared the profile of your customer.
I will repeat myself: imagine standing on the street. I give you a piece of paper with a list of features corresponding to your customer and ask you the following:
“Find me a person who corresponds to the features listed here.”
In essence:
The customer profile is a recipe for how to find your customer.
Also, remember that the customer and the user sometimes can be two different people. If you’re thirsty and you buy a bottle of water, you are the customer who buys the water and the user who drinks it. But if you have a child and you buy a bar of chocolate, you’re the customer, but the user is your child.
If you haven’t finished preparing the customer profiles for your business, check this article – “Customer Profile”.
Interviews with the Customer
As Steve Blank said:
There are no facts inside your building, so get outside.
You can sit at your desk, write business plans, and discuss your ideas with your partners, but if you don’t go out and actually speak with your customer, you are just dreaming!
You need to put a solid foot on the ground and make a reality check. You have to interview the people you are planning to sell to in order to find out if all the conclusions you’ve made so far are real.
A detailed manual on how to conduct these interviews can be found in this article – “Interviews with the Customer”.
In Customer’s Shoes
The next step is to take all the knowledge you’ve accumulated from the interviews and put yourself in the customer’s shoes to answer the following questions:
- Who is actually — for real — your customer?
- Do you understand what product or service you are selling?
- If you put yourself in the customer’s shoes, would you buy your product?
The ultimate goal is to understand what the customer needs, what we actually offer, and if there is an intersection between these two.
The final result, you may have noticed, is a clear idea of what our product should offer.
A detailed manual on how to complete this exercise can be found in this article – “In Customer’s Shoes”.
Repeat All Exercises
All these exercises:
- Finding a problem and a solution
- Identifying your business model fit
- Preparing the customer profile
- Conducting interviews with the customer
- Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes
started with the initial knowledge you had about the world and the market. However, throughout this journey, you’ve collected information which most probably changed your perspective and view on your own business.
Therefore, with this new knowledge, you have to repeat all these steps!
The ultimate goal is to make one or a few iterations until the point when you have identified a real problem, a real solution, a good business model, and a clear idea of who your customer is who will actually buy what you are selling.
Only after completing this can you move on to the next topic, which is preparing a one-sentence pitch. Be sure you’re ready because that’s what’s coming in the next article.