space learning often comes from feedback you receive from customers on the solution space artifacts you have created.
Problem space and solution space are an integral part of the Product-Market Fit Pyramid, as shown in Figure 2.1. Your product's feature set and UX live in solution space – they're what customers can see and react to. The other three layers of the pyramid live in problem space. The important interface between problem space and solution space occurs between your value proposition and your feature set. It is, of course, within your control to change your feature set and UX as you like. Unlike customers and their needs, which you can target but can't change, value proposition is the problem space layer over which you have the most control.
Figure 2.1 Problem Space versus Solution Space
As Dave McClure of 500 Startups said, “Customers don't care about your solution. They care about their problems.” Keeping problem space and solution space separate and alternating between them as you iteratively test and improve your hypotheses is the best way to achieve product-market fit. The Lean Product Process gives you step-by-step guidance on how to do that. Let's jump into the first step of the process: identifying your target customer.
Part II
The Lean Product Process
Chapter 3
Determine Your Target Customer (Step 1)
You begin the Lean Product Process by identifying your target customer, which is the bottom layer of the Product-Market Fit Pyramid. The problem space benefits you're going to identify pertain to a specific customer segment. Different customers will have different needs – and even those who have the same needs can have distinct views on their relative importance.
Fishing for Customers
Many companies have launched products without any explicit discussion of the target customer. Sometimes, a company will introduce a product with one target customer in mind but end up attracting a somewhat different customer segment. Matching a product with its target customer is like fishing. Your product is the bait that you put out there and the fish that you catch is your target customer. Sometimes you catch the type of fish you were going after and sometimes you catch a different type of fish. You can develop hypotheses about your target market, but you won't truly know who your customers actually are until you throw your hook into the water and see what kind of fish bite. Once you have a product or a prototype to show customers, then you can gain clarity about the target market you're attracting.
Of course, your bait can attract more than one type of customer. For example, Quicken was designed so that individual consumers could easily manage their household finances. But it was so easy to use that small business owners started using it to manage their companies' finances. To the Quicken team's surprise, they had caught a second type of fish with the same bait. Through customer research, Intuit discovered that almost a third of Quicken users were using it to track the finances for their business. So Intuit developed a new Quicken Home and Business version of their software to better address the distinct needs of small business owners. This discovery about their target market also led Intuit to launch QuickBooks, an accounting software application designed exclusively for managing business finances.
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