Seth Godin posted seven questions all entrepreneurs should answer. The more I try to answer these questions the more useful they become.
Here I go with my attempt. I first list the “off the top of my head response” and then the edited response so I can show the evolution:
- What problem are you solving?
Original: The problem is a faulty memory for names, faces and connections.
Edited: People can only remember a limited number of names, faces and connections. As social networking expands and corporate life gets more erratic we encounter more and more people we will never see again, and could be useful to remember. The downfall of a large social network is that the quality drops as the size increases. - What is your solution?
Original: Showing the user how someone is connected to him or her.
Edited: Stronico documents and show the history and context of how one person is connected to another, as well as companies, events, and families. This information is usually locked in some gated form in a corporate database – Stronico lets the user own all of his data. The customer can use all of the social network and the quality of the social network will scale (Editing Note: Perhaps the slogan should be “Scaling the Social Network” or something like that) - Who is it right for?
Original: Salesman, entrepreneurs, and nerds.
Edited: Primarily it is for people who need occasional close relationships to a large and diverse group of people. At first blush, this means Salesman, entrepreneurs, and nerds. To use the jargon approach, this is for people who need to utilize “weak ties”. - What will it do for those people?
Original: They can keep track of their social network, they can also play matchmaker and favor-doer
Edited: They can have a stronger social network. Social networks build on themselves to some degree – they can utilize their social network better than normal, which allows them to play matchmaker and favor-doer for everyone they know, making them someone people will go out of their way to meet - How does it work?
Original: A web based system that shows you your social network, as well as how everyone is connected to you.
Edited: Stronico shows you who and what you know in terms of a social network. - What are the reasons someone might NOT buy it?
Original: Their occupations are not tied to their social network, their life is static
Edited: Their occupations are not tied to their social network, their life is static, or they are literally anti-social. - Why should they trust you?
Original: I wrote the program for myself, so it was designed to work for someone.
Edited: They do not need to trust me, the utility of the application should speak for itself. (This question does reveal a weakness of the marketing plan and product design. The program grows progressively more useful as time goes by, but how to convince the potential customer of that beforehand?)
I’m ending the editing process now, as I’ve taken up twice the time allotted for this, but it was a useful exercise, and I intend to revisit the questions and make them more coherent over time.
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog
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Written By Steve French |
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