Your value proposition is a promise. Promises are short, plain, and checkable. Poems are not. Most founders write poems and wonder why nobody understands the product.
Clever confuses. Clarity converts. If a stranger can't repeat your promise back in their own words, the promise isn't done yet.
Start with this scaffold. Boring is the point.
For [user],
who [problem],
[product] is a [category]
that [benefit].
Unlike [alternative],
we [difference].
Worked example:
For freelance designers who waste hours chasing late payments, Billflow is an invoicing tool that auto-nudges clients on your behalf. Unlike FreshBooks, we built it for designers who don't speak accounting.
Now write 10 versions. Yes, ten. The first three will be bad. Versions four through seven will sound the same. Somewhere around eight or nine, the right phrasing shows up.
Pull every blank from earlier waypoints:
[user] comes from your persona in waypoint 4.[problem] comes from real quotes in waypoint 2.[alternative] and [difference] come from the gaps in waypoint 5.
Read your top three to someone who has never heard your idea. A friend at dinner, a member in a Discord, a sibling on the phone. Then ask: "What does this product do, in your words?"
Bad: They pause, squint, say "uh, like a productivity thing?"
Good: They say "oh, it nags your clients to pay on time."
If they translate it correctly without effort, you have a winner. If they ask follow-up questions, rewrite. Fewer adjectives. Shorter words. Cut "seamlessly," "intuitive," "next-generation," and any noun ending in "-ification."
Ship ugly. The promise can be plain and still pull people in.
- Writing one version and calling it done. Quantity beats taste here.
- Adjective stacking. "Beautiful, intuitive, powerful" says nothing.
- Naming the product before naming the user. User first, always.
- Testing only on people who already love you. They will lie politely.
Draft 10 versions in Notion. Read your top three to a stranger. Keep the one they repeat back correctly.
One value proposition sentence under 25 words, with a note on which stranger you tested it on and what they said back. The sentence names the user, the problem, and the difference.
Your value proposition is a promise. Promises are short, plain, and checkable. Poems are not. Most founders write poems and wonder why nobody understands the product.
Clever confuses. Clarity converts. If a stranger can't repeat your promise back in their own words, the promise isn't done yet.
Start with this scaffold. Boring is the point.
For [user],
who [problem],
[product] is a [category]
that [benefit].
Unlike [alternative],
we [difference].
Worked example:
For freelance designers who waste hours chasing late payments, Billflow is an invoicing tool that auto-nudges clients on your behalf. Unlike FreshBooks, we built it for designers who don't speak accounting.
Now write 10 versions. Yes, ten. The first three will be bad. Versions four through seven will sound the same. Somewhere around eight or nine, the right phrasing shows up.
Pull every blank from earlier waypoints:
[user] comes from your persona in waypoint 4.[problem] comes from real quotes in waypoint 2.[alternative] and [difference] come from the gaps in waypoint 5.
Read your top three to someone who has never heard your idea. A friend at dinner, a member in a Discord, a sibling on the phone. Then ask: "What does this product do, in your words?"
Bad: They pause, squint, say "uh, like a productivity thing?"
Good: They say "oh, it nags your clients to pay on time."
If they translate it correctly without effort, you have a winner. If they ask follow-up questions, rewrite. Fewer adjectives. Shorter words. Cut "seamlessly," "intuitive," "next-generation," and any noun ending in "-ification."
Ship ugly. The promise can be plain and still pull people in.
- Writing one version and calling it done. Quantity beats taste here.
- Adjective stacking. "Beautiful, intuitive, powerful" says nothing.
- Naming the product before naming the user. User first, always.
- Testing only on people who already love you. They will lie politely.
Draft 10 versions in Notion. Read your top three to a stranger. Keep the one they repeat back correctly.
One value proposition sentence under 25 words, with a note on which stranger you tested it on and what they said back. The sentence names the user, the problem, and the difference.