Frameworks
DEFINE the Problem or Opportunity
EVALUATE the Solution
Assemble Your Value Proposition
YOU: Founder-Market Fit
Applying Your Value Proposition
Review the frameworks above or as outlined on the left DEFINE the Problem or Opportunity EVALUATE the Solution Assemble Your Value Proposition
🎙 Hear how Michael taught it the lecture, cleaned & woven in
▶ Watch the original lecture
A quick word on how these frameworks are packaged. I was a self-professed horrible student, and the way I learned was by making up mnemonics for everything, because I couldn’t remember anything I’d been taught unless I had a mnemonic for it. So all the way through, I’ll give you simple mnemonics. They’re not the only way to think about these things, they’re just my way of getting them into a form you can actually remember and use.
The frameworks fall into the three stages of the work:
- DEFINE the problem or opportunity: the 4U’s (Unworkable, Unavoidable, Urgent, Underserved) and BLAC & White (latent/aspirational vs. blatant/critical, plus finding a White space).
- EVALUATE the solution: the qualitative before/after test (acute pain to absolute joy), the 3D’s of a real breakthrough (Discontinuous, Disruptive, Defensible), the Gain/Pain ratio, and DEBT (the dependencies and whole-product factors you rely on).
- ASSEMBLE the value proposition: put all of the above into the single “for who / unlike / because” statement.
None of these are academic. Each one is really a set of questions you should go and ask your customers, so that when you finally write your value proposition, it’s grounded in what real users told you rather than what you hoped.