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Well said. It shocks me how complex people make their value proposition for no real reason but vanity. "We are like Air BNB for lawn care with a focus on servic

Well said. It shocks me how complex people make their value proposition for no real reason but vanity. "We are like Air BNB for lawn care with a focus on service and quick delivery." Ugh. How about "Push a button and your lawn is mowed in 48 hours." Every business should have a one sentence value prop: Twitter: "open the app and get the news in less than 5 minutes." Snapchat: "see what your friends did today in the time it takes to ride the elevator to your office." Stripe: "spend three minutes pasting some code and start accepting credit card payments." Devzilla: "create an account in two minutes and get more web development leads." So on and so forth....if you can't describe it like that then it is too hard to use.

vinceguidry 10y ago
> Well said. It shocks me how complex people make their value proposition for no real reason but vanity. "We are like Air BNB for lawn care with a focus on service and quick delivery." > Ugh. How about "Push a button and your lawn is mowed in 48 hours." You use the former for a savvy investor whose already seen half a dozen lawn care startups and is looking for where yours is different. ("focus on service and quick delivery", different than focusing on price or on the user experience of the app) You use the latter to describe what your startup is doing to Uncle Shirley, i.e. potential customers. The difference is in what you're positioning yourself against. Either it's other startups or the neighbor kid down the street. Use the former pitch with the latter audience and it'll sail over their heads, the latter pitch with the former audience and they'll roll their eyes and tell you to get to the point. But you can't not position, marketing without positioning is education, and ain't nobody got time for that.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Every business should have a one sentence value prop: Sure, but the elevator pitch for customers is not the same as the elevator pitch for investors.
- goatherders 10y ago
  Fair point. I spend zero time thinking about investors.

vinceguidry 10y ago

> Well said. It shocks me how complex people make their value proposition for no real reason but vanity. "We are like Air BNB for lawn care with a focus on service and quick delivery." > Ugh. How about "Push a button and your lawn is mowed in 48 hours." You use the former for a savvy investor whose already seen half a dozen lawn care startups and is looking for where yours is different. ("focus on service and quick delivery", different than focusing on price or on the user experience of the app) You use the latter to describe what your startup is doing to Uncle Shirley, i.e. potential customers. The difference is in what you're positioning yourself against. Either it's other startups or the neighbor kid down the street. Use the former pitch with the latter audience and it'll sail over their heads, the latter pitch with the former audience and they'll roll their eyes and tell you to get to the point. But you can't not position, marketing without positioning is education, and ain't nobody got time for that.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Every business should have a one sentence value prop: Sure, but the elevator pitch for customers is not the same as the elevator pitch for investors.

goatherders 10y ago
Fair point. I spend zero time thinking about investors.