Thread by @paraschopra

Be in the desires market, not the solutions market.

(a short thread on this mental model)

🚀 It's also the 4th chapter of my new book invertedpassion.com/jobs-to-be-don…

1/ It’s important to clearly distinguish between what people desire and how they fulfill them.

Our desires usually remain the same, but methods of fulfillment keep changing.

2/ For example, the desire to have good oral hygiene can be fulfilled in multiple ways: toothbrushes, mouth wash, or even crunchy foods like carrots that help clean mouth as we chew on them.

3/ What people care about is their desires and not how they’re currently fulfilling them.

If a better way to fulfill their desire comes along, they’ll switch to it in a jiffy. This is why innovative startups take over entrenched incumbents.

We have no loyalty to solutions.

4/ Because there are diverse ways of fulfilling a desire, it also means that an established toothbrush company doesn’t have to just compete with other toothbrush companies.

It also has to compete with all alternative ways of getting good oral hygiene (such as mouthwash)

5/ This is good news for entrepreneurs because this means no market is ever *done*.

Even before toothbrushes came along, people cared for their oral hygiene and even long after toothbrushes are long gone, people will still care for their oral hygiene.

6/ Since desires always remain, better solutions can always supplant the old ones.

Google replaced Yellow Pages, and tomorrow, even Googling can stop but our thirst for finding information will never go away.

7/ Entrepreneurs are fond of saying that their solutions are unique in the market and hence they have no competitors.

That’s not true.

8/ People do not sit still waiting for a perfect solution to arrive in the market. They’re usually using something or the other to fulfill their desires.

You may not identify it as a competitor not what people are using be optimal or good, but it’s there and people use it.

9/ No matter how unique, all new things compete with old things.

So, as an entrepreneur, you need to have clarity on what human desire are you trying to fulfill and what existing alternatives are available to the customer to fulfill that desire.

10/ Even though CRM software and Microsoft Excel seem to be serving different markets, from the lens of desires they compete head-to-head because both fulfill the same desire of business owners to keep track of their customers.

11/ (Desires are also known as “Jobs” in the popular “Jobs-to-be-done” framework for building products.)

Here's a fantastic intro from @alanklement jtbd.info/2-what-is-jobs…

12/ 🧠 Remember:

solutions come and go, but desires always remain.

13/ That's it.

Read the full chapter here: invertedpassion.com/jobs-to-be-don…

The amazing illustrations are by @sia_steel - check out her work on instagram.com/wowsig

14/ I'm posting ~1 new mental model for entrepreneurs every week.

Here's the entire list of 60+ mental models that I'll cover in a year or so: invertedpassion.com/free-book-ment…

Make sure you sign up for email updates on the book page.

15/ Revisit the previous mental model here:

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1318113236894457856