Get to the Core

When a book has thousands of pages but only a couple of great ideas covered in a few chapters, the reader gets frustrated. If the author removed the fluff and published a shorter book instead, the reader could go from having a frustrating experience to a great one. With startups, you have to remove the roadblocks that are stopping your consumer from enjoying your core product. Often, those roadblocks cost you money, and they’re ruining the consumer experience.

To get to the core, fill in what your product does on the left side, all the value props you normally mention, the ideas you have in the product pipeline, and any other product details you can think of. On the right, determine what is the one product detail that matters to anyone and everyone. This will help you figure out what you can possibly strip away and where you should focus your efforts.