# Build Products That Solve Real Problems With This Lightweight JTBD Framework Drawing on her experiences building products at Lumosity, Oculus, and Facebook's New Product Experimentation group, Sunita Mohanty shares a lightweight "jobs-to-be-done" framework for early-stage product teams, along with templates and go-to-market tactics. --- In my role leading product teams as a part of Facebook's [New Product Experimentation](https://npe.fb.com/?ref=review.firstround.com), we’re focused on that hazy “0 to 1” stage of building, where ideas are unproven and products are in their most nascent stages. My job is to distill the complicated unknowns of a big, disruptive vision into clear, actionable steps for my teams and increase our chances of finding product-market fit at every step. This focus on taking big swings while still pursuing concrete steps toward building valuable products is the direct result of my previous experiences — I’ve felt the pain that comes from building products that fail to tackle a clear problem firsthand. Now in my work as an angel investor and advisor, I see teams run into this very same brick wall. As I help them prioritize early product and go-to-market efforts, I often find myself dishing out the same advice: **Do the work to make sure you are building a product that people will actually find valuable**. That requires an incredibly deep understanding of the user, their hopes, and their motivations, instead of taking the easier path of operating off of untested assumptions. There’s a range of philosophies out there on how to avoid this trap and better approach early stage customer development, but in both my advisory roles and in my day job, I've come to rely on one framework: **JTBD** **(jobs-to-be-done)**. I first read [Clayton Christensen](https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done?ref=review.firstround.com)’s approach to JTBD while in grad school at Stanford, but it didn’t really sink in. After stumbling upon it again years later at Facebook, I’ve since found enormous value in employing a version of this framework as we built Oculus social features, Facebook Preventive Health, and more recently, [Tuned](https://npe.fb.com/2020/09/24/updating-tuned-app-for-couples-to-stay-connected/?ref=review.firstround.com). JTBD is by no means a new way of thinking. But it can be confusing to get started with, since it’s heavy on the corporate strategy jargon and has been reinvented many times over. A quick Google search reveals a bevy of confusing terms, from the debate over jobs-as-progress and jobs-as-activities, or the competing visualizations of maps and hierarchies. I’ve also found that JTBD has a bit of a consulting-esque vibe and seems less vision-driven, which can be off-putting to many product-driven founders. If you’re looking for a deep-dive into the jobs-to-be-done theory and how others apply it, I recommend reading through [this primer from The Christensen Institute](https://www.christenseninstitute.org/jobs-to-be-done/?ref=review.firstround.com), [this article from Harvard Business Review](https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done?ref=review.firstround.com), [Alan Klement’s overview of two different interpretations](https://jtbd.info/know-the-two-very-different-interpretations-of-jobs-to-be-done-5a18b748bd89?ref=review.firstround.com) and [Intercom’s guide](https://www.intercom.com/resources/books/intercom-jobs-to-be-done?ref=review.firstround.com). But if you’re looking for something a bit more lightweight and accessible for startup product teams, read on for my simplified approach to JTBD. ## WHY YOU CAN’T JUST WING IT: THE CASE FOR USING A FRAMEWORK TO UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMERS Do you find your team is unable to align on what matters _most_ about your product as you’re starting out? Or that you’ve worked hard to bring something to market that you were all excited by, but you’re not getting traction with users? Founders, early-stage teams, and even later-stage product orgs run into these problems time and time again. The bottom line is that you can very easily build something, but to increase your chance of creating something that is solving a _real_ problem you need to be more rigorous in your approach. > Anyone can build products. Not everyone can build products that solve a real problem and land product-market fit. More specifically, here are three common problems I see both early- and late-stage product teams running into that indicate a framework might be useful: - **1. You’re relying too heavily on your own vision**. You’re not really listening to your users and you’re building something you _think_ people want. This is confirmation bias at play — the human tendency to cherry-pick information that aligns with our pre-existing beliefs while ignoring information that doesn’t. If you haven’t gotten out and deeply understood who you are building for and what problems they experience, you are more likely to run into this problem. - **2. You’re more focused on the excitement of the technical challenge than your users.** Often, eng and design teams may get excited about a specific project because it’s a new challenge to create. But just because it’s new and fun to build doesn’t mean people will actually use it. - **3. You can’t crisply articulate your value prop, and everyone on the team looks at it a different way.** This happens when you don’t have a shared sense of empathy around the problems users face. It makes it tough to drive alignment and focus on what features matter the most or how to align product features with go-to-market needs. ### ENTER THE JOBS TO BE DONE FRAMEWORK: WHAT IT IS AND HOW IT TAPS INTO WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT Whether you’re a product manager innovating within a larger company, or building a brand new early-stage product at a startup, the JTBD framework works to create better, non-obvious insights about your audience. Ultimately, the core value of this framework is that it provides an approach to gathering an understanding of who your user is, and what their motivations and hopes are. While JTBD has been used for 30 years in industries making physical goods, it’s relatively newer in software building circles. The theory of jobs to be done centers around understanding customer behavior and underlying rationale for making choices. The idea is that innovators win by resolving a consumer’s struggle and satisfying their unmet aspiration. Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt [explained](https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/what-customers-want-from-your-products?ref=review.firstround.com) it this way: "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!" ## BUILDING BETTER PRODUCTS STARTS WITH A GOOD JTBD STATEMENT — HERE’S YOUR ROADMAP A jobs to be done statement concisely describes the way a particular product or service fits into a person's life to help them achieve a particular task, goal, or outcome that was previously unachievable. When crafted well, these statements create clarity around what doesn’t exist today and what product builders can focus on to innovate. ### Why you need one: A good, crisp JTBD statement captures underlying motivations, triggers and context for the problems your user faces. This statement can be foundational for your entire product and GTM planning, from focusing your PRD or product spec, to identifying your channels and marketing messages. - **An increased focus across your team on solving the most important problems** by using shared language for how you all understand what problems to prioritize - **A higher likelihood of delivering new value to people** by solving real problems, which should translate into positive leading indicators of important product metrics (like higher engagement and stickiness of your product) - **A stronger understanding of competition for your product**, by understanding more about the situational context and full set of alternatives that people “hire” to do that job. ### Put in the legwork: A template and 4-step process for crafting a standout JTBD statement Before putting pen to paper, lean on these guidelines: - Jobs are _not_ the same as your mission, vision or goals. - Jobs describe the **underlying human needs**, _not_ the features of the product. - Jobs illuminate **consumer insights on underlying motivations and struggles**, _not_ business objectives. ### To put that into practice, here’s a JBTD statement template that I find helpful: - When I…… (context) - But…… (barrier) - Help me…. (goal) - So I….. (outcome) With those principles and end goal in the background, follow these four steps to gather all the info you’ll need to fill out your JTBD template: **1. Start by defining your audience clearly.** Think about the defining characteristics that help you develop a crystal-clear image in your head of your audience. **2. Ground yourself in market research.** Understand as much as possible about this audience’s behavior: what they currently are using to solve this specific problem and where they feel the most pain in the customer experience. **3. Talk to your users.** Using surveys and interviews, get a firsthand account about your user’s mindset and decision process. Try to understand underlying motivations and barriers. **4. Prioritize**. From user interviews, look for themes that emerge in jobs to be done. You can also run surveys to rank the importance of jobs for better understanding of the market opportunity. ### JTBDs IRL: Examples to bring this framework to life #### **[Discord:](https://discord.com/?ref=review.firstround.com)** - **Core audience:** initially PC gamers - **Motivations:** communicate synchronously while playing a game - **Barriers:** split attention while playing a game makes it hard to use chat only - **Discord JTBD**: _When I want to jump into my favorite game, but I don’t know if there are people around to play, help me safely coordinate with a group of like-minded gamers._ #### **[Peloton:](https://www.onepeloton.com/?ref=review.firstround.com)** - **Core audience:** upscale, fitness oriented super moms/dads - **Peloton JTBD**: _When I need an option to workout, but I can’t go to my favorite studio, help me to get a convenient and inspiring indoor workout._ #### **[Segment:](https://segment.com/?ref=review.firstround.com)** - **Core audience:** startup developers and/or consumers of marketing/product analytics - **Segment JTBD**: _When I need to understand what people are doing on my platform, but I have different sources of data, help me easily pull together one source of truth._ #### **[Mutiny:](https://www.mutinyhq.com/?ref=review.firstround.com)** - **Core audience:** Account Based Marketers at B2B companies - **Mutiny JTBD**: _When I need help enterprise accounts discover and trust our value prop, but I have limited time and resources, help me quickly and confidently deliver the right message._ #### **[Tuned:](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tuned-a-new-app-for-couples/id1488796752?ref=review.firstround.com)** - **Core audience:** Millennial couples - **Tuned JTBD**: _When I want to feel connected to my partner, but don’t have a special way to share my feelings, help me be more emotionally expressive, so we can strengthen our bond._ ### NOW WHAT? HOW STARTUPS CAN PUT JTBD INTO PRACTICE JTBD isn’t a static statement, nor is it a one-time exercise suited for the entirety of a company’s lifespan. If used well, it can continually focus on what matters most as a north star and increase the odds of finding product-market fit. ### How to incorporate JTBD into the product org: You can weave it throughout your product team’s process by using JTBD to inform your value props, PRDs and go-to-market tactics. Here’s a quick recap of actions: - **Idea generation:** Turn JTBD into ideas. - **Feature prioritization:** Generate possible features based on JTBD. - **Value prop testing**: Narrow it down to value propositions that resonate most with your audience. - **Go-to-market planning:** Craft distribution strategy and key messages. - **Analyzing customer data and feedback:** Understand user behavior and refine JTBDs based on feedback. ### How to revisit your JTBD statements: Periodically do interviews to understand how your customers currently use your product. You can specifically ask people if the product is solving the job you intend it to tackle, allowing you to validate your understanding. Ultimately, building products people love requires curiosity, deep listening, and truth-seeking to make sure the problems you _think_ you should solve are truly real pain points.