Glossary

A few terms you might run into over the weekend:
Persona: A fictitious customer profile based on first and second-hand research that helps determine who you should be directing your marketing efforts towards
Problem/Solution Fit: When you have established through customer interviews that you have found a problem people have and that people are interested in the solution you have for it.
Product/Market Fit: Once your product is out in the market and has real users, this is when you’ve gone beyond problem/solution and are building demonstrable traction for your product.
Pivot: When you encounter a challenge with your assumptions about the problem, the customer, or perhaps the market itself, and you have to make meaningful and fundamental changes to the product strategy.
Lean Startup: From the Eric Ries book, this can most simply be described as the process of constant iteration through the idea of “build, measure, learn”.
Customer Development: Steve Blank’s framework of talking to your potential customers to validate the hypotheses you have around their problems, and solutions that might solve those problems.
Unique Value Proposition: a clear statement that describes the benefit of your offer, how you solve your customer’s needs, and what distinguishes you from the competition.
Prototype: Anything that conveys the value proposition of your solution, but doesn’t have to be a functional product.
MVP: The most bare-bones and essential product you can possibly build while still providing the value proposition.
Go-to-Market: Strategy built on a mix of sales and marketing, tested to see what channels and tactics will most effectively convert customers to your product.
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): The cost of getting one more customer to buy/join your product.
LTV (Lifetime Value of a Customer): The average revenue generated by a customer. (This must be more than your CAC!)B2B: A business model where your company creates products for other businesses. B2C: A business model where your company creates products for consumers.