# Solving Product  ## Metadata - Author: [[Étienne Garbugli]] - Full Title: Solving Product - Category: #books ## Highlights - It covers the five stages in the life cycle of a product business: Idea: Is this idea worth pursuing? Startup: Will it work? Growth: Can it scale? Expansion: How big can it get? Maturity: How can we find more growth? No matter the stage, we’re always looking for growth. ([Location 222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FR56X6V&location=222)) ### Chapter 1 – Introduction - There are two reasons why growth stalls: The business hasn’t figured out the next thing it needs to learn. The business attempts to grow with a flawed, incomplete, or outdated8 model of its product, users, market, or customers. ([Location 279](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FR56X6V&location=279)) - If you don’t figure out what makes your business unique, you’re forced to rely on good ideas, great execution, hacks, emulating the competition, or any other ad-hoc tactics for growth. This can work for a time, but eventually growth will slow down and you will be left with little to no knowledge on how to truly grow your company. ([Location 284](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FR56X6V&location=284)) ### Chapter 2 – Isolating the Issues #### How Gaps Affect Your Business  ## New highlights added October 17, 2024 at 12:53 AM > “If you want to optimize for avoiding failure, you have to optimize for listening.” – David Cancel, Serial Entrepreneur ([Location 424](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FR56X6V&location=424)) > Getting people to buy is one thing. Getting people to use, and keep using a product, is another ([Location 453](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FR56X6V&location=453)) > “It’s easier to make things people want than it is to make people want things.17” – Des Traynor, Intercom Co-Founder ([Location 481](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FR56X6V&location=481)) > This is also what you’re trying to do with products: Find people (a market segment); Understand their goals (the Job they’re trying to get done); Identify gaps you could deliver value on (differentiation); Provide the services (the product); Iterate until clients are satisfied with your work (PMF); Productize the offering (scale). ([Location 488](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FR56X6V&location=488)) > Because even building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is expensive, you should learn as much as possible pre-product, before writing even a single line of code. In the Idea stage, we focus on: Finding a market and identifying a Customer Job (Chapter #4); Assessing the competitive landscape and finding an edge (Chapter #5); Creating a compelling value proposition (Chapter #6); and Validating our product concept (Chapter #7). ([Location 496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FR56X6V&location=496)) > “It is better to be approximately right than to be precisely wrong.” – John Maynard Keynes, Economist ([Location 506](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FR56X6V&location=506)) > At this stage, it’s not uncommon for teams to challenge the value of customer research: “It’s not statistically significant”. “The interpretation of the data is subjective”. “The research wasn’t done by ‘professionals’”. But these reasons are mostly bogus. When your uncertainty is great, even small sample data can produce big reductions in uncertainty. ([Location 509](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FR56X6V&location=509)) > Earlier on, your research won’t be perfect. What matters is that you are learning forward, challenging your assumptions, and making progress. ([Location 515](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FR56X6V&location=515))