Jobs to Be Done
In one sentence
People don't buy products — they 'hire' them to get a job done in their life.
The simple version
Nobody wants a drill; they want a hole in the wall — and really, they want a shelf up so the room looks nice. Jobs to Be Done asks: what progress is this person trying to make? Your real competition is anything else they could 'hire' to make that progress.
Functional
What task do they need done?
Emotional
How do they want to feel?
Social
How do they want to be seen?
Why it matters
It stops you obsessing over features and demographics, and helps you see why people really switch — and who you're really up against.
How to do it
- 1Find people who recently bought or switched to a solution.
- 2Ask what was happening in their life when they started looking.
- 3Map the functional job (get it done), the emotional job (how they want to feel) and the social job (how they want to be seen).
- 4List everything they considered — including doing nothing.
- 5Design your product and message around that job.
Real-world example
Christensen's team studied milkshake buyers and found many bought them in the morning to make a boring commute more bearable and stay full until lunch. The 'competitors' were bagels and bananas, not other milkshakes.
What the books say
When we buy a product, we essentially 'hire' something to get a job done. If it does the job well, we'll hire it again; if not, we 'fire' it and look for something else.
Common mistakes
- Describing the job as your product ('the job is to use our app').
- Only looking at direct competitors.
- Ignoring the emotional side of the decision.
Questions people ask
Is JTBD the same as a customer persona?
No. Personas describe who someone is. JTBD describes what they are trying to achieve in a specific situation — which predicts buying better.
References
- [1]
More books on this in the library
Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice
Anthony Ulwick's practical guide to Jobs-to-be-Done theory and Outcome-Driven Innovation. Learn how to understand what customers really want and create products they'll actually buy—with an 86% success rate.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!
Outlines 22 fundamental marketing laws like Leadership (be first) and Focus (own a word) for startups to build dominant positions and acquire customers by creating categories. Use cases include Starbucks owning 'premium coffee'; vs Traction Channels, prioritizes mental positioning over tactical distribution for long-term customer loyalty. Key for go-to-market strategies in competitive markets.
Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy
A foundational strategy book that explains Michael Porter’s core frameworks—including competitive advantage and industry analysis—in accessible language. Highly relevant for startup founders who need to understand market structure, positioning, and how to build durable competitive advantage from day one.
Competitive Advantage: The Value Chain and Your P&L—Applying Michael Porter’s Value Chain Framework to Your Business
A chapter that introduces Michael Porter’s value chain framework and explains how to apply it to a company’s activities and P&L—helpful for startup founders seeking to understand and design competitive advantage into their business model and operations.
Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
A curated collection of speeches, talks, and commentary from investor and Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger. While not a startup playbook, it is widely considered must-read mental-models and decision-making material for founders—covering multidisciplinary thinking, incentive design, rationality, and long-term value creation that underpin great entrepreneurial judgment.
Prospectos de $100M
Spanish-language edition of Alex Hormozi’s customer acquisition and lead-generation playbook, focused on creating highly compelling offers and scalable systems to turn strangers into eager buyers. While framed for general businesses, it is widely used by startup founders to learn systematic growth, funnel design, and offer positioning from the early stages through scaling, making it a strong addition to a must-read list for growth-focused startup founders.
Learn next
The Mom Test
Ask customers about their real life and past behaviour — never 'do you like my idea?'.
Customer discovery
Go and talk to real potential customers to check that the problem you want to solve actually exists.
Product-market fit
When you've built something a real market badly wants — and you can feel the pull.