Challenging How Early Startups Build - Zac Lyons, Managing Partner at Agile Innovation Advisors

This conversation has been a long time coming, as Zac Lyons and I have been talking about Jobs-To-Be-Done and its applicability to how startups identify and build the most important products.  It was so fun to record our discussion, and you'll find me in the zone during many parts of it, as it's a topic that has become near and dear to me.

Zac has developed very cool tools at his firm, Agile Innovation Advisors, to help companies and founders identify valuable opportunities, using things like the Heat Map of Market Opportunity and JTBD Solution Sprint. This helps them better focus their design and development efforts, win with customers, and achieve their business objectives.

I love his approach for framing up innovation challenges in customers’ terms, and it's led me to ask many founders questions about how customers describe their problems and what they think they want and need. As Zac's approach is focused on identifying and prioritizing the needs of customers, based on the jobs they are trying to get done, he can better identify true opportunities for innovation. And I believe this is a critical approach nearly every founder should also apply to her process for evaluating opportunities and where they should (or shouldn't) spend their time.

Enjoy this conversation. I guarantee you will be challenged in your thinking and will learn something from it!

Thanks to show sponsor, BankTech Ventures.