Introduction It’s very easy in software to convince yourself some app you just thought of is actually a brilliant idea. Technologists are drawn to new trends like moths to flames. Artificial intelligence, augment- ed reality, machine learning, wearables; it’s very easy to join a couple of dots and believe you have a killer product on your hands. So what’s really important is a lens that shows you the real needs of the customer. It lets you appraise new product ideas by simply asking: “Does this advance our ability to get the customer to their desired state?” When we were first introduced to Jobs-to-be-Done, it quickly resonated with something we already intuitively knew – that great products were built around solving problems. What Jobs-to-be-Done gave us was a better way of framing what we felt – a vocabulary and framework to unite the team behind a product strategy. Over time, it turns out it’s not just a great way for thinking about prod- uct. It’s become a marketing strategy at Intercom, as well as informing research, sales and support. Despite being almost 30 years old, the application of Jobs-to-be-Done to the software industry is still pretty new. Most of the writing out there caters to building physical products. You might have read why people buy milkshakes or mattresses. But how does this translate to buying software? Compared to physical products, it’s even easier for software to go off the rails. Before you know it, your simple time tracking tool has become enterprise version 4.3 of a project management app. Nobody sets out to build bloated software; it can actually come about through a series of tiny decisions from your founders, engineers, and product managers. Jobs-to-be-Done helps you creatively limit the imagination of your product. It lets you focus on making things people actually want. When you’re solving needs that already exist, you don’t need to convince people they need your product. It’s easier to make things people want than it is to make people want things. The challenge for any company is to understand what products are currently serving those needs, and improve upon that. This book isn’t a step-by-step guide to applying Jobs-to-be-Done to your business. It will give you some of the most valuable lessons we’ve learned over the last five years as we’ve applied the theory to our product. It’ll show you how Jobs-to-be-Done can be applied to a modern software company. But the lessons, like some of the jobs we discuss, are timeless for any business. You’ll get a new way to think about your competitors, how to get customers to switch, how to define the scope of your product, and how to identify the job your product does. Our hope is you’ll find your own inspiration in the lessons Jobs-to-be-Done has taught us so far. Des Traynor, Co-Founder, Intercom 4