“It gave me so much clarity. I thought this would be easy, but I was stuck in a loop not knowing how, because my mind is very chaotic. In an hour and a half, laying it all out… wow, it seemed like it wasn’t that hard, but I’d been unable to do it for months. It gave me such a huge sense of relief. Organised data. Now it feels like I’ll find the path.” — Founder, e-commerce-related consulting and SaaS

The reality of expert founders

This is a the reality of the founder of an e-commerce related consulting wanting to augment their value with a SaaS solution.

She’s a sector expert. She understands her market inside out. Worked with over a hundred customers. Knows their problems, their workflows, their frustrations. And she had a clear vision for a SaaS MVP that could solve something real for them.

But she was stuck.

She had too many ideas. Multiple customer segments. Different angles for the same problem. Different buyer profiles. Deep understanding of real user needs, of up coming changes in the sector, of many opportunities uncovered by other providers. All viable. All good. Yet unable to decide where to start. So she’d spend weeks spiralling. Months in a loop. Her mind jumping from one possibility to another. She was lacking structure to organise all the knowledge, information and ideas in her head.

So what did we do?

The good news: in a matter of days, she already has a prototype ready to test.

Here’s what made the difference:

We brought three people into the room: the sector expert and founder herself, a tech person expert in building digital solutions and AI, and me (the facilitator with method and product management expertise, to hold the process to make progress).

Then we ran two strategic sessions.

In the first, the founder downloaded everything, all her customer knowledge, all her insights, all her market understanding, her ideas, hopes, fears and frustrations. I translated that chaos into personas representing ideal clients and user journey maps. Nothing invented. Just her expertise, made visible and structured.

In the second, in just a few minutes we prioritised the ideal client from a list of 9 using the 4U framework (a super versatile tool I learned from the wonderful Design Sprint Academy). One question cut through all the possibilities:

Who has the problem, is deeply dissatisfied with how it’s solved now, and needs a better way urgently?

One persona emerged. That became the first focus. Here’s the key part: you’re not excluding the others. You’re choosing one to understand deeply, build for, get real feedback from. Then the others benefit too, they can (and likely will). You focus on one to serve many, without needing to understand all of them first.

Then we focused on this ideal client persona: what do they think, say, feel. Next, we looked at their user experience, we mapped their step by step journey and identified where we could create real value at different points in their experience.

And there another decision moment, so many opportunities just in this one persona’s journey! Once more, decision was made: what do we want to validate in a couple of days. What we decide here is not what to focus on in the next year, is about what is the minimum thing to put in front of some test users in two days.

With the sense of relief of focus in small step, small timeframe, one area was chosen. Then we built a storyboard of a potential solution. And now she has a prototype to test with users.

You can achieve this progress too

This pattern repeats: Sector experts with deep market knowledge and/or product/service/workflow ideas. But frozen. Unable to decide where to start. Or even worst constant pivot due to lack to action to validate a direction or anchor any decision with real user data.

And it’s all solvable. With structure. Taking everything you (and your team) know, all that expertise, all that insight, all those good ideas, and using it in different ways so you can decide clearly and progress towards the ultimate goal: put something in front of real users and find out what they like and what they would like even better.

Then you move forward with focus.

That’s the work I do with teams before they invest weeks or months in the wrong thing.

Book a 30-minute call to turn your AI and digital product ideas into a clear next step and validate it in days. https://tidycal.com/amaialesta/

Greater impact, better results, healthier teams in tech-driven organisations

amaia@amaialesta.com

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