Recently, at Engagio, I have been talking with customers looking at the details of the different problems (opportunities) to solve. I am looking for a particular situation with the following characteristics:
- A task that happens all the time, preferably by lots of people.
- Clearly sub-optimal workflow with incredible pain in every step.
- Computers could help.
- People are willing to pay to have it better.
If you have all three, you have the makings of an incredible B2B Startup. If you build a company that is worth a billion dollars, that is called a unicorn. I think I have stumbled across a situation that has all of those characteristics. This is the meat of the unicorn.
Maybe my analogy isn’t working. Don’t I need to make the unicorn before I can have meat? It’s like saying baby meat will help make a baby. Yeah, ok, I take it all back.
That situation where the task is incredibly painful. There is another word I use to describe it. A goat rodeo.
Look, not all blog posts are filled with wisdom and UX magic. Sometimes it’s just nonsense. Like this:
My first goat rodeo was in 1994. They wanted me to do a “mail blast” with a typewriter. A typewriter! I bought ACT Contact Management and print Avery Labels instead and used Word to do a mail merge for the letters. See, that’s a goat rodeo.
Whatya think?