- alectcoughlin
#51: JTBD Framework: Is Your Product a Vitamin or Painkiller?
Updated: Aug 16, 2021
A challenge that can plague product teams as well as those responsible for the GTM is a lack of deep and nuanced understanding of their audience.
This is where the jobs-to-be-done framework comes in.
Shoutout to First Round's Angel Track community member, Sunita Mohanty, whose article inspired this micro essay. Link to her insightful + actionable JTBD article in the Twitter thread below.
4 key benefits of embracing the JTBD framework.
Enable you to build a product that's a painkiller, not a vitamin
Build a product that solves a high-priority problem for an audience.
The kind of “job” that audiences are excited to "hire" your product to solve for aka a painkiller.
Not a vitamin which is more or less a nice to have but not necessary.
Niche down
"Importantly, a job should highlight a promising specific market opportunity about an unmet need — balancing between too broad or too niche.
What exactly is too broad or too niche?
This is more art than science, but as Paul Graham describes: “You can either build something a large number of people want a small amount, or something a small number of people want a large amount. Choose the latter.” - Sunita Mohanty
Crystalize focus of entire team including GTM
As the saying goes, a good product with bad distribution will lose to a bad product with good distribution.
The entire organization benefits by embracing the JTBD framework as it helps bring a shared focus on the same Northstar.
This helps address one of the biggest distribution challenges, getting Demand Generation and Sales on the same page to operationalize the go-to-market-strategy.
Customer centricity
Putting the customer at the center of everything you do can be easier to say than do.
Committing to the JTBD framework and associated documentation that can be embraced by the product and cross-functional teams enables everyone to get on the same page and remain there.
March 21, 2021 (Tweet Link)