User Dimensions of Reality
What is the "dimension" in which your customer operates?
For Ruck, our users live in the offline world. While "Construction Tech" can refer to any technology that serves that industry, true ConTech should solve an offline pain point for construction workers. Otherwise, your technology is simply a piece of repurposed SAAS. Being a SAAS company is fine - but you end up solving the white-collar side of the blue-collar industry.Project management, accounting, invoicing, payment processing - all those are white-collar jobs.
The reality for people wearing the blue collar is in the physical dimension. That's where their real migraine issues exist. If they can't get workers to a job site, they're screwed. If the weather prevents the work from being completed, they're screwed. If the land turns out to be poisoned, protected, or unstable, they're screwed. If they can't get construction materials to the job site in time - they're screwed.
Find a problem that actually exists in the dimension of reality for your users, instead of just finding problems that are "easily scalable". Aim to improve the world, not just grabbing market share.
For example, if you target the restaurant industry, the process of getting orders from the front of house to the kitchen is absolutely critical to the operations of the business. The invention of digital POS/order-ticketing systems cut out the need for each server to run to the back of the building, or up/down stairs to get the tickets to the chef. Punch it into a computer, and the ticket prints out at the other end. That's a good innovation that solves a real dimension issue for restaurants. Unsurprisingly, it actually requires some hardware development along with the software.
If SpaceX wanted to change the space industry, how lame would it be if they just only created some SAAS that helps you count down instead of the actual rocket that went to orbits the planet?
领英推荐
This is not to say that software-only innovations suck. Both of those examples include a hardware element to their company's innovation. Software only companies like Uber, Alibaba, Airbnb, Facebook, PayPal have genuinely solved real dimension issues for their users.
A "real dimension" is anything that is critical for the primary task that your users need completed. Primary. Not secondary, not auxiliary.
At the end of the day, if your goal is to make the world a better place through innovation, a business model and user base will naturally align with your solution. If your users can't do their primary, real jobs, then they have no need for tertiary, peripheral services.
Customer Success Strategist - | Marketing, Business Development, Relationship Builder
1 年I always like the approach find the Job to be Done for the customer. When you get that right its easy to build a business and solve problems. Great post and thought Lee
Getting Retailers & eCommerce Brands More Sales And Better Revenue Through Operations | Ran a $100M / year Operations and Logistics Network, 20 Yrs Exp | Dedicated to Destroying the Status Quo | Principal & Founder
1 年Exactly. Tech and platforms are great, but they are tools. When there's physical element (i.e. operations) and things that need to happen in the real world, the ability to execute and solve the problem is the value. How the tools help that, or do it better is great. But great tech can't erase poor execution in the real world.