Everyone says “Focus!” and it´s hard to argue with that. For example, Yahoo´s total lack of focus was one of the main reasons it fell from the throne of being “the internet company” in its early days. (I wrote about it here)
But when someone says “focus”, they don´t always follow up with what you should focus on. Let me give a couple of examples of companies that failed (of didn’t do as well as they expected) because they didn´t really have anything to focus on and see if you could work out the similarities.
Google Glass was a wearable device designed to combine augmented reality with smart functionality. Remember all the noise and images of Sergey Brin wearing Glass everywhere? Well, the product didn’t really have a clear, simple purpose for consumers. Nobody could work out how to use it in a way that solves a problem or meaningfully improves daily life to offset the dorky look it gave. In essence it had no real practical applications and was too expensive for a toy to be used a couple of times and get put into a drawer. As a result, Google discontinued Glass. They tried again in a few years, but failed again. I think they also tried to go to a niche in industrial applications, which makes a lot more sense, but to be honest I don’t know what happened there.
Segway was introduced as a revolutionary personal transportation device. Very cool and very future. But then it turned out it was a classic “solution looking for a problem”, which (a problem) the mass market didn’t have. Walking (free), cars, or bikes worked just fine and were more practical. Lucky for Segway they became a niche product for tours and security. Not exactly mainstream “future of personal transportation”, but much much better than dead.
Juicero sold a $400 "smart juicer" that worked only with proprietary juice packs. This is my favourite of all these examples. Why do I need a machine to open a pack of juice? It turns out, it wasn’t just me thinking that. Others discovered they could squeeze the juice packs by hand without the machine. The expensive device offered minimal added value, resulting in widespread ridicule. My next question is – why buy capsules of this juice rather than other “normal” juice packs? So, with lots of extra efforts and the “cool tech” angle, to me it looks like another juice selling company trying to pedal unnecessary stuff. Not a big problem, since they shut down rather quickly.
So, if Yahoo messed it up because of its inability to focus on something, they at least had something they could focus on. These examples didn’t even get to that point. They had nothing to offer that people wanted. Well, except Segway – after they changed the proposition.
And with this I arrive to a blindly obvious answer to the question earlier – focus on something that people need. Dah…
Of course you are. And, obviously, that moves you outside of realm of the laws for everyone else. Sure it does. Now - try to find people willing to firstly listen to the description of your platform and then pay for it. Listen they might, but pay they won’t, or at least it’s very unlikely and close to impossible. Same as them - I get it, your platform is wonderful, but what’s in it for me? If you think people care about your tech, you are in for a surprise. They care about their life, not yours.
The biggest failure of platform technology companies in early days is assuming that people care about their platform. Nobody does. And if nobody cares, why would they become a paying customer? Also – why should they care? “It does everything” is hardly a value proposition helping them, is it? I talked to my fair share of folks from the Cambridge University saying “it does everything”. I always asked, “so what are you going to sell?”. Often, the answer is “well… that. I told you it can do anything”. Right. Get it to make me a cup of coffee, will you? At least that I know I want. “everything” I want too, but I don’t quite understand how you’ll give it to me and what exactly you are giving me.
Having a platform is fantastic. It gives you a chance to build a much bigger company. But – selling a platform is a bitch. Philip Kotler, one of the biggest marketing gurus ever, famously said “people don’t want drills, people want holes in their walls”. Or something to that extent. And it can’t be more true. Nobody wants to buy a platform because it can do anything because people would only consider buying something that does something they need. It needs to make a hole in their wall, in other words.
So, we are back to the obvious – sell something that people need. Again – dah…
ChatGPT says “A use case is a specific situation in which a product, system, or service can be applied to achieve a goal or solve a problem. It typically describes how users interact with [a product, system, or service] to accomplish a task, providing details about the process, requirements, and outcomes.”
Oxford Languages dictionary defines a use case as “a specific situation in which a product or service could potentially be used.”
It’s simple really. A use case is a particular application of your product, a particular use of it by a particular type of client to solve a particular need they have. The most important aspect for me is that it has specific utility for this client. In other words, someone wants and needs something your product delivers.
End of definition
Let’s compare a company that doesn’t think in terms of use cases with the one that does.
Any company in early stages usually has to deal with several applications or different user needs. And this is where a “platform technology” becomes a real curse, by the way. Since it “can do everything”, there is a huge temptation to make it do something for all of kinds of prospects. Same temptation rules in a non-platform company. After all, you need sales, how can you turn a prospect down? That takes a lot of courage.
So, a company that doesn´t have a clear understanding of its preferred use cases may have to simultaneously deal with a prospect from (let´s say) aviation industry and a prospect from (let´s say) pet food industry. To prepare a proposal, it needs to work out some basics about these two markets, figure out what problem the prospects are trying to solve, understand it, come up with an idea of a solution, describe this solution in a way that a prospect understands (which, in itself, deserves a separate book and differs hugely industry by industry), test if the solution works, figure out pricing, present the whole thing to the prospects, deal with feedback and then move to closing the deal. Then it needs to implement the solution. All of the above has to be done for two very different markets, needs, users, terminology, pricing approaches, etc – and both of these prospects present a novelty factor - problems that the company hasn’t worked on before. All of that needs to be done with startup staffing, i.e. in a situation of serious resource constraints. You are lucky if your product is simple, say chocolate, and the differences are not big. But in reality, this is basically like creating two very different products with very different descriptions, different emphasis on what’s important, etc, etc, etc. Not to mention that the lingo used by pet food industry is likely to be different from that used in the aviation industry - creating a steep learning curve in talking to each of the prospects.
In contrast to that, a company that already chose a specific use case to focus on has already gone through all these steps and can make a proposal by simply copying another one it sent out last week. It then can implement the solution focusing on variations from the others it implemented last month.
It is rather obvious which path is easier. I’d argue that even if the product is chocolate, it’s still better to chose a particular use case for the reasons I describe below.
Focusing on use cases simplifies your life (and sometimes saves it, if you are a startup) because it gives you:
All these niceties that come with focusing on specific use cases are reinforcing each other all the time. They act together. As you progress, you become stronger and stronger.
So, for me it’s an obvious point - any company, big or small, needs to be focused on specific use cases. One or two at first. More with traction. Many more if you are a corporate behemoth.
“Use cases” is a term that every company I ever worked with knows. And they know I push this point until I annoy everyone. I don’t mind. I feel like a surgeon saving lives in these moments.
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