── ── Startups
Jobs to Be Done
Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) holds that customers don't buy products for their features; they 'hire' them to make progress in a specific circumstance. The unit of analysis is the job, not the customer demographic or the product category. Understand the functional, emotional, and social progress people seek, and you understand what they'll actually hire and fire.
How it works
Shift the question from 'what does our product do' to 'what job is the customer trying to get done, and what are they hiring today to do it.' A job is stable over time even as the solutions that serve it change; the milkshake bought to make a boring commute tolerable competes with bananas and radio, not other milkshakes.
Find the job by studying the circumstance of purchase: what pushed them to look, what pulled them toward your option, what anxieties held them back, and what habit they had to abandon. The job, not the demographic, tells you what to build and who you truly compete against.
When to use it
- Deciding which features actually matter versus which merely sound good
- Discovering non-obvious competitors customers compare you against
- Repositioning a product that has demand but unclear messaging
- Prioritizing a roadmap around real progress rather than feature requests
When not to use it
For low-stakes, habitual, or impulse purchases where there is no meaningful 'progress' being made and over-theorizing the job adds nothing.
Worked example
The milkshake and the morning commute
In Clayton Christensen's well-known account, a fast-food chain found that many milkshakes were bought early in the morning by lone commuters. The job they were hired for was making a long, dull drive more bearable, with one hand and no mess, not satisfying hunger or pleasing children. Once the job was clear, the improvements that mattered, like making the shake thicker to last the whole commute, became obvious.
Why it matters for founders
Founders ship features the loudest users request and then wonder why adoption stalls, because feature requests rarely name the underlying job. Getting the job right tells you what to build, how to message it, and who you're really up against. deciqAI's agents anchor on the job to be done before acting, so effort serves real customer progress rather than a feature checklist.
Install this skill (free, MIT)
npx skills add deciqAI/knowledge-skillsFAQ
Isn't this just market segmentation?
No. Segmentation groups people by who they are; JTBD groups by what they're trying to accomplish. People in different demographics often hire the same product for the same job, and identical demographics hire it for different jobs.
How do I find the real job?
Interview recent buyers about the moment they decided to look, what they considered, and what they gave up. The story of the switch reveals the job far better than asking what features they want.