A real world example would be Instacart. Instacart is an online grocery delivery service. They could have tried to replicate the entire grocery supply chain – buying warehouses, trucks etc. But Instacart couldn’t add value there. The first point they can add value is actually ordering the groceries online, something big retailers had traditionally struggled with. By understanding the entire grocery workflow, and the point at which they could add real value, Instacart designed a great solution. And they did so by leveraging the existing grocery store infrastructure, rather than trying to build a solution from scratch. Other products do this well too. Instagram starts with importing your social network. A time-tracking product could start by importing projects from Basecamp. Good APIs and import features help your users get off to an easy start. Where should you stop? Your budget, whether time or money, should restrict but never define your scope. A large budget should define how well a problem is solved, never how many problems are tackled. Attempting to tackle an entire workflow from start to finish for all types of users is near impossible. Your product should stop when the next step: · has well defined market leaders looking after it (e.g. Apple, Netflix, Expedia), and you don’t intend to compete. · is done in lots of different ways by lots of different types of users (e.g. trying to process salaries in a time-tracking app would be difficult). · involves different end-users than the previous steps (e.g. managers, accountants, etc). · is an area you can’t deliver any value. Identify and eliminate meaningless steps 26