Day 61 in MIT Sloan Fellows Class 2023, New Enterprises 5, your business core - Cheeky Chompers
Dragon's Den
Cheeky Chompers sell baby products and two ladies made presenation in front of investors. Their feedbacks were really terrible.
However, after this program, their sales recorded over 1M GBP.
What is your core
What is the core of one competitive business?
Just to be clear, core and value proposition are different.
For example, Wallmart's "everyday low price" is not core.
It is a value proposition. Its core is purchasing power and logistics.
Other examples,
Hond's core is motor expertise, not reliable power products.
Gillette's core is not availability with sufficient quality, but dominating share in the distribution channel.
Core is a final protection and key differentiator. Bill Aulet called it the “crown jewels”. It is that special thing that no one else can do. Even if they see you product and study it in detail for a long time, they maybe able to recreate everything but the core.
And it should match with customer's painpoints.
The bad examples of these are
- Groupon
- Dollar Shave Club
- Dominik Guber
Core should not be a temporary competitive advantage.
Typical cores are as follows.
- Networking effect
- Low pricing
- Outstanding hospitality
Assets, Moats and Cores
In all assets, strong assets are called moats.
And the strongest assets are cores.
There are three dimensions to separate your core and just strengths.
- Unique: Difficult for anyone else to duplicate
- Important: Ties directly to your quantified value proposition
- Grows: Increases in strength over time relative to competitors
In Cheeky Chompers, its cores are 1 million customers, happy community and founders' story.
Data enhances your core
Recently, a lot of companies developed their cores on the data analysis.
For example, Netflix built a culture to embrace this trend "Nobody knows anything(so, let's look at data)"
Look at Amazon's model.
Customer experience generated new customer experience and it grows traffic. Massive trasffic generated negotiation power against sellers and it contributed to customers' selection. This positive feedback loop would be Amazon's core.
Also, its business shifted from hard ware to software, and then move to data now.
