Living in a material world

The good, the bad and the ugly

Let’s deal with the easy part first. The “ugly” is no clear use case at all.

With that done, how do you know a good use case from a bad use case? Easy – ask ChatGPT (or does it have to be Deepseek now?).

“A good use case is clear, concise, and user-focused. It describes specific goals and steps without being overly complex.

A bad use case is vague, overly detailed, or not user-focused.”

All very true. But it’s much easier for ChatGPT to give this answer than for you to actually put it into practice. Life is less black and white. But some parts are easier than the others. Let’s look at that first.

“We focus on Healthcare”. Good statement, horrible as a use case. Healthcare can be dental, allergies, doctors marketplace, surgery practices, medical tourism, anything, really. So, this is not even a use case, it’s a very first step in selecting a company’s focus, which is about 1000 miles before a real use case.

“Our software helps identify biomarkers that others can’t find” (from a company I recently met). Much better. It’s clear that you focus on folks in the R part of R&D of pharma and the like. But based on what I know about this part of healthcare, which is not a lot (why did I go with this example?), people usually work on specific diseases rather than look for any markers for any disease. Therefore, with this statement it may be easier to find the target audience, but not as easy as it could be. The way people look at things, how they think about things, what lingo they use may be different between folks working in diseases X and Y. If you helped to identify a marker for disease X, that may not convince someone working on disease Y. Hence, you may not get enough replicability – which, as you remember, is one of the main goals.

So, it’s better to narrow it down even more. Like “Our software helps identify biomarkers for Covid-19 that others can’t find”.

Reminder (I quote):

“A use case is a particular application of your product, a particular use of it, by a particular type of client. The most important aspect for me is that it has specific utility for this particular type of client.”

The more specific and more identifiable - the better. You want to be able to:

1. walk into an office building,
2. ask “who works on problem X?”,
3. be directed to that person or group,
4. tell them “I think you are struggling with this particular issue”,
5. see them nod,
6. explain how you can solve that issue for them,
7. walk out with a signed contract.

For which you should know which office building to go to, who you are looking for, a painful issue they have, and how you can solve it - all while using the terminology they use and being convincing.

Similarly, a response to a Linkedin ad “We help healthcare companies” is likely to be pathetic and even if someone responds, your explanation of which problem you solve and how you do it is likely to sound a lot like “our technology makes coffee too”. Conversely, if the ad says “We have a way to detect breast cancer early”, the response is likely to be better and from the exact people you want to talk to. I’d also expect that you’d be able to explain the solution in a way that would be more clear and more interesting to them.

Therefore, for this example, I would consider starting with “Our software helps identify biomarkers for disease X that others can’t find” and “Our software helps identify biomarkers for disease Y that others can’t find” as two separate use cases. If you find out that they are very similar, you can combine them later.

This one or that one?

If you are lucky to have several candidate use cases, how do you select the best one to focus on?

I think that the best path is a combination of in vitro and in vivo experimentation. By in vitro I mean mental gymnastics to select the use case that looks most compelling and has the most components clearly defined (see later where I talk about what you need to define for a use case). But, as with many other things, in vitro is done in the lab and real life doesn’t always follow the same path that the “lab life” does. Hence, you need in vivo experiments – testing things in the market with the types of customers you plan to target. In the Rabbit Story terminology in vitro experimentation is getting to the hypothesis from random shots and in vivo one is confirming this hypothesis in real life. After that confirmation, you can claim that you have a use case that you are targeting.

I haven´t made ANY obvious statements for a while, so feel a strong urge to make one. You are much better off with a strong use case than with a weak use case. Not bad as obvious statement go, eh?

What is a stronger use case? A stronger need is almost universally the best answer. This can manifest itself in different ways

• Acuteness of need. Cancer pill vs pain killer vs vitamin is how I usually illustrate this. It’s obvious that the first one will lead you to sell everything you owe to get one, while the last one may briefly catch your eye in a TV commercial.
• Sticky use cases, well, “stick”, i.e. where customer keeps coming back. Addiction is the extreme illustration of this point. Drug addicts don’t need to be marketed to – they come seeking for a solution to their need (and in a strange twist, often are not looking for a solution to their actual problem). Clearly, closing sales is much easier in this case and sales tactics are simple – give them the first use and they are hooked. I am not advocating starting a drug pushing business, all I am saying is – imagine that your product solves something that is similarly vital to your customers (while being legal). Wouldn’t that be nice.
• Uniqueness of offering. My mental model for this is owning the only well in the only oasis in a middle of a large desert vs renting a water tap next to a big river with public access. Obviously, selling water is much easier in the former case.
• Ability to solve the problem. Even if you found the most acute, stickiest and unique use case, if you don’t solve customer’s problem, this is not a use case for you. Either work out how to solve it with your product or move on to the next one.
• Stickiness sort of implies this to some extent, but not necessarily. In my view it´s better to sell a product that calls for repeat use. This is why Gilette sells blades and single-use razors rather than razors that last 100 years. Of course, this is debatable, high value objects like houses and cars represent a different totally viable option of a one-time sale.
• Payability (defined as “The ability or willingness to pay“). The above points assume that someone would be willing to pay for what you are offering, but it’s worth a check.

I want to clearly state that I believe that it’s possible to build a business around propositions that are strong or weak on any of the above dimensions. There are huge companies selling vitamins, bottled water in fully packed by competitive products water isles of supermarkets and the like. But if you can choose, wouldn’t you prefer to sell something uniquely addressing a very strong and repetitive need?

Here’s a couple of articles talking about strength or need – one in the shape of a “killer use case” and the other one is in terms of daily use (stickiness).

Then comes a bunch of factors that are less important in my book, but are still very important.

• Market size if the main one of these. You can have a potential user base of two people with a very strong need, but that wouldn’t give you a sustainable business (exception being if those two users want to buy huge amounts of your product on a regular basis. Say you sell armoured vests to the army and the police. That works.)
• Path to customers. You need to know how you can get to your customers. Are they in a particular geography? Do they visit particular type of websites? Etc, etc, etc…

Other considerations can be anything you think makes sense. How easy it is to produce the product. How cost competitive it is. Is it new category or replacement sale. And so on.

The whole nine yards

What to define, describe or put together for a use case:

• Target customer group (customers of one type) – one industry, one profession or something that is rather specific and most likely narrow.
• A problem - customer pain points/needs that they have and that you solve. This needs to be specific, real, meaningful, relevant for a particular customer group and resonate with them.
• Unique value/selling proposition addressing the above in terms of what problem you solve and how you solve.
• Customer benefits. I put this separately because I think this deserves being addressed explicitly. This is “what’s in it for them” point
• Differentiation from competition. Why should they go with you rather than anyone else
• Simple pitch – slides, texts, something you can use to explain the above at different levels of detailisation (catch attention, elevator pitch, more detailed explanation)
• Actual product. Note that I list this last. You can add this after you validate the problem and solution with the market. Don’t built products for something that you have not validated! I am sure you are smart and have a good sense of your target customers, but you’d look a lot less smart if you spend months (or years) building something that nobody buys

All of the above needs to be:

1. Clearly articulated in a language understandable by your target customer group
2. Be convincing – targets should agree with you on all these points.
3. Before validation all you have is a hypothesis, after - it’s a verified use case you can focus on.

Bonus point: you need to be able to handle questions and objections, without using “yes, but”. You shouldn’t have to argue people into finding your proposition interesting, their need for it should do that job for you, ideally without you saying much more than a few sentences.

Examples: Apple’s iPod or food home delivery. Think through all the above points for these offerings – they meet all the criteria. Note that none of them is product heavy, they start from the need we all have. For example, a lot has been written about the fact that all technologies around digital music existed before iPod, but it was Apple that put them all together in a way that customers found compelling and that satisfied their need.

Generally, you follow the Rabbit Story - once you validate hypothesis, you can develop different tools to sell your product for this use case, hire sales people, etc, etc.

Playing second base

First base is getting to some sales around your first use case. Second base is growing sales of the first use case and possibly adding the second one

I talked about it in  Scaling: three guiding principles: push vs pull, sequential approach to scaling use cases, the bowling alley.

And all the way – iterate. Test multiple versions of your value propositions within smaller groups before rolling out large scale. Get feedback, adjust, test again.

Checklist

• Have you articulated a use case?
• Is it clear, concise, user-focused, describes specific goals? Or is it vague, and not user-focused? Is it overly complex or too detailed?
• How many of the same kind have you sold? What are the similarities between them?
• Can you clearly identify your target customer and how you will reach them?
• Have you validated your use case with the market?
• Have you defined all components of your use case?
  
  

Do you like this post? I do other ones every now and then. Subscribe if interested.

 © 2024 No to Startup BS