Hello, and welcome to the bottom up skills podcast. I might pass since I'm the CEO of  and we continue with adventures in product management, we're tackling the biggest, most challenging questions that will come up as you create, build and manage your product. And today we are tackling the big old question is.

Do I have a solution to the user's problem. Now, prior to this, we looked at what are the problems our users face. So should definitely check that one out, but this time we're going to the other side of the value proposition canvas, we are asking ourselves, what do we propose? Are we actually solving something here?

Because really in the end of the day, if you understand the jobs that your customer is trying to get done and. Pains they experienced in the gains. They're looking for, if you know all of that, then what you can actually do is map your [00:01:00] product or service to those and that mapping exercise. If you're really objective about it can ensure that you have a really good product.

So I want you to check out the value proposition canvas. You can do that over a bottom up.io. We have a free masterclass on lean, so you can check that out. And on this value proposition canvas, I described for you earlier, what the world of the customer is pains, gains and jobs. But on this side is where we actually map the solution.

And there are three things that we map. The first thing is the pain relievers. What are the things your product had doing that addresses? The pains of the customer and actually relieves those pains. The second thing you need to have is your gain creators. And this is a strict argument for how you're creating the benefits that your customer is looking for.

And these should correlate directly to features within your product or service [00:02:00] so that therefore when you zoom out. You have a proposition. And when you can connect that and balance this with your customer needs, then you will actually be on the way to having problem solution fit, which is a critical first stage of your journey in your product.

Because if you've got a solution to a problem, then you can go out in the world and build a product for a market. But before we get to all that, I want to take us back to the example that we're using. And we were talking about Airbnb and what we were doing when we mapped the customer side is we saw, you know, yes, it's great, uh, to, to use Airbnb because I can meet.

Ah, interesting people get a local experience. That's pretty cool stuff. And, um, the pains though is like, Oh, I'm not really sure it doesn't come with a big guarantee of a hotel. Who am I staying with? Where is it? And this is all part of having. Um, you know, a [00:03:00] wonderful vacation or getting some affordable accommodation.

Um, so that's the customer world. So let's have a look at what the product does on the other side. How's it relieving those pains? Well, first of all, they vet both hosts and guests. So this goes a long way to mapping against some of that uncertainty that people feel and also sharing space with, uh, Uh, dang, uh, strangers.

You know, the other thing that they do is they give a really strong guarantee on the quality of the, uh, the accommodation. And, um, they also kind of back it up with, uh, financial compensation of, uh, your bookings. If they get canceled by the host now, Part of the, the specific thing about staying with people you don't know, they'll even give you the, um, the guarantee that if, if people are not good hosts, they'll be taken off the platform.

So what you can see here, this is like a good description of, um, [00:04:00] pain relievers. Okay. And those pain relievers need to map to the customer pains, or you don't want to be relieving pains for some other user group that is not your customer. Make sure that you can really literally draw a line between the pain relievers and the pains, because that's a bridge from the product to the customer.

Okay, but let's not stop there because, you know, we talked about all these wonderful things people are looking for when they use the Airbnb hap. Well, um, how do we meet those needs? Well, first of all, there's some pretty wacky, exotic homes, so you certainly can get some unusual things on Airbnb. Um, You know, there is some really, um, um, affordable options.

Maybe they're not the nicest of places, but if you really need to watch your wallet, then actually Airbnb will come in, particularly in off-peak times, way cheaper than a hotel. Um, [00:05:00] now the other thing that they do is that they create all sorts of flexibility, um, through their pricing and feature. Lists. So you can say, look, if I need wifi or a swimming pool, whatever you want, you can filter the criteria that way.

And it's, um, really powerful. And if you think about it, uh, very few hotels, even today in 2020 offer you that sort of filtering and range and assault and for you to get the most out of your vacation. So what you can see here is. These are the pain relievers in the gain creators of Airbnb. They do a lot to make it feel safer and certain, and they certainly give you lots of flexibility and some, some really wonderfully novel places that you'd never get from a hotel.

So you can kind of see the picture coming together here. And this comes back to two essential parts of the overall service of Airbnb. [00:06:00] One is that they create a marketplace for renting out short-term living. And two, they aggregate, uh, on their platform, all the activities you can do in a city. So beyond what they started with, you can now get all sorts of wonderful city experiences that really help you meet interesting people and get a real flavor of the local happenings in a town or city.

So they have it. So this is how, you know, how you map solving the problem for your user. Now, this should be done in conjunction. This whole proposition should be done with the customer profile. So the gain creators must directly map. To the gains that you understood your users are looking for. And just in the same way, you're paying the leave as much directly correlate with what is in the pain's area.

And if you have a big pain on the customer side, that's not being addressed, this is a huge flag that [00:07:00] you need to consider this in your prototyping as to whether you can create a service that doesn't address that. So this mapping exercise is what we pulled together as a value proposition canvas. So good.

I've been using this for years and years and the beauty of it. Is its simplicity. It's so simple. And you can have a couple of tips here. If you have different segments, you can have different value proposition canvases for different segments. So obviously in the case of Airbnb, they have a host and they have a guest.

Each of those would have a value proposition cameras. Cause they're quite different. One's B2B, one's B to C, right? So. Interesting thing is you can have a lot of variations based on your segments and these should grow and change over time. And it's such a good way to start your journey of building a great product.

And just a quick note here, if you are really getting into this, this is a subset of a wider canvas called the lean [00:08:00] business canvas. You should check out the lean business canvas because that goes beyond the problem solution and gets into all the customer channels. It gets into. Uh, the costs, the revenues, the unique value proposition, the unfair advantage, all sorts of good stuff.

And that is probably closer to the full venture. Um, mapping that on the canvas. This is really cool too, to the product itself, but it's another great part of the lean startup methodology. All right. ...