The most important sentence for successful entrepreneurs

The most important sentence for successful entrepreneurs

Have you ever heard people trying to explain their businesses like this?

If you’ve heard entrepreneurs who sound like the scientist in this video, then you know they don’t have their value propositions right, which means people might have trouble understanding their businesses.

During last Wednesday’s hilarious Entrepreneurship 101 lecture, Joseph Wilson, education lead at MaRS, broke down the components of a good value proposition and illustrated with all kinds of vivid examples how to make it great.

According to Joseph, a value proposition is NOT:

  • an elevator pitch;
  • an ad compliment; or
  • a mission statement.

Rather, a value proposition is a statement of the unique benefits delivered by your offering to the target customer (which lays out the three components in a value proposition).

Joseph then navigated deeper into the techniques for developing a proper value proposition, covering topics such as the problem interview, the day-in-the-life-of scenario, value proposition designers and more.

Explaining something by writing an entire book about it is much easier than explaining something in one simple sentence. Your value proposition is just that: the one key sentence that describes your whole business, a sentence that explains the “heart” of your business model and other strategies.

Watch the video below to learn more from Joseph about how to make your own value proposition.

Other resources that might be helpful:

Article: “Achieve product-market fit with our brand-new value proposition designer canvas”
Article: “Value proposition”
Workbook: Market Strategy Workbook 2: Critical Value Factors

Want to connect?

Join the Entrepreneurship 101 LinkedIn Group.
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Download the course schedule.

You can also view the slides from the presentation here.

Forgot to take notes? Here is a sketch note shared by attendee Sacha Chua.

Entrepreneurship 101 by Sacha Chua