Beginning With The End In Mind

In 1997 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Steve Jobs said a line that was as wonderfully insightful for product developers back then as it is now…

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology then try to figure out where to sell it.”

You’ll have noticed this mistake if you paid attention to the Web 3.0 slash crypto space these past few years. They took the technology and tried to cut a path to the customer – most failed.

We’ve made this mistake ourselves.

We took ideas for products and services and brought them to market with little thought given to why and how our customers would use them. Then tried to figure out how to get people to buy them as an afterthought.

Framework: Begin with the end in mind is a framework that applies to all explorations of the human imagination. Create once in mind, then again for reality.

At Rugby Bricks, we launched a range of socks, just cause. Without any thought given to who our customer is or why they’d want them – they flopped.

At World Fitness, just this month, we almost launched a concierge service for members because we thought it’d be cool without considering why our members would want it…. They probably don’t.

Eric Reis, author of the lean start-up and other highly regarded start-up manuscripts like Steve Blank’s ‘The start-up owner’s manual’ also drill down on this point.

They say you should start with your customer’s end result in mind and then let them tell you the solution.

Steve was bold enough to back his instincts on the solution with the iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc. But we don’t have to to be successful unless we want to change the world.

Notes:

The point is starting with the end in mind, i.e. the outcome for the customer and working backwards to the solution dramatically improves our chances of creating something people want.

This is the opposite of starting with the product or service and trying to convince people why it is right for them.