Vision

Relative Costs

Trade-offs

Capabilities

How can I inspire people to get up every day and come to work? What are we aspiring to achieve? What values do we uphold?

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Start with something simple. Your vision will evolve along with other elements of the strategy.

What do we optimize for?

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Do we optimize for low cost, like Southwest Airlines, or for unique value, like Starbucks?

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Low costs might be a priority, but they do not necessarily mean having low prices.

Trade-offs define what NOT to do.

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IKEA doesn't sell assembled furniture and limits available choices (e.g., materials).

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Trade-offs create focus and amplify the value.

What competencies and resources do we need to acquire?

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Do we need suppliers or partners?

Market Segments

Value Proposition

Key Metrics

Can’t / Won’t

The market is defined by the problems people have. For example, IKEA’s market: people that want to get high-quality home furnishings at low prices.

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What are the customer's jobs to be done? Within the market, there are groups of people with similar jobs, desired outcomes, and success metrics.

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Are there any constraints, e.g., geography, language?

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What will be your first customer segment?

For each Market Segment (persona and jobs to be done):

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1. What before: Existing, problematic state (e.g., maintaining tasks in Excel)

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• How: Features and capabilities that change the situation (e.g., Kanban board)

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• What after: The benefits and outcomes (e.g., organized tasks with clear deadlines, increased productivity)

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• Alternatives: your unique value, unique attributes, and optionally relative pricing vs. competitors and substitutes (often represented as a Value Curve).

Define a few key metrics to measure how your product is doing and whether the strategy is working.

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Consider the North Star Metric and One Metric That Matters (OMTM).

What makes us think competitors can’t or won’t copy our strategy? Is this unique value proposition, activities, knowledge, culture, partners, IP?

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It’s essential. The moment you succeed, someone will try to do the same.

Growth

Ask Yourself

How do we envision growth? Is it PLG or Sales-Led Growth?

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What are our preferred Sales and Marketing channels? Will we rely on Social Media, SEO, Influencers, or Resellers?

Do the various elements of our strategy fit together and reinforce each other?

�What needs to be true for this strategy to work? How can we validate these assumptions?

Cost Structure

Revenue Streams

What will be your costs?

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Consider things like rent, hardware, licenses, technology, marketing, subscriptions, and salaries.

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Which of them are recurring costs? How will they scale as your business grows?

How much money do you hope to get from each channel?

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How are you going to price your product? Are you aiming for penetration, value-based, competitive, or usage-based pricing? Have you considered SaaS?

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Is your revenue model scalable? What are the biggest uncertainties and risks?