Looking into multiple vision statements, I realize that there are only two broad possibilities (and a combination of these two) to define your product vision. One is Customer value/experience (what the product delivers) and the other is the platform (what the product becomes).
In detail:
- Customer Value/Experience: Your vision is expressed directly in the form of the value that the product brings to the customers. Examples of this style are “Improve health & happiness in the world” (a health tech app), “Help customers achieve their financial goals (a fintech app)”, “Helping SMBs to be more productive” (a SaaS app), etc.
Alternatively, a customer value-focused vision can be expressed indirectly as in relation to a benchmark or against competitors. Examples are – “Becoming the most loved esports app”, “Fastest streaming service on the internet”
- Platform: A platform product vision is about becoming a platform that can
i) Support more use cases for the same customers (e.g. “One stop solution to SMBs”)
ii) Support more customer segments (e.g. ‘Payments for all’)
iii) Enables stakeholders or their objectives (e.g. ‘Comprehensive Pricing platform’, ‘Lowest cost customer support platform in the industry’)
iv) Supports scale e.g. “Platform that supports a million transactions a minute”.
Is that all? No, then there are two other things that a product does/enables that can be used to define a vision.
- Product can create moats for a business – While UI/UX is easily copyable, the data generated by a product (customer interaction, behavior, location, context, etc) are hard to copy and can be used in a powerful way to create a moat for a business.
- Product can lead growth by creating growth loops for acquisition, retention and engagement.
However, these two are rarely used in defining a platform vision but are incorporated quite often into the product strategy.
What interesting product vision statements have you created or heard about? Please share them in the comments.
