Last week, I wrote about the meaning of the phrase “business model“. New companies are asked by potential investors to describe commercial plans for a product, service or technology that at best may exist on a few scraps of paper. So a nonsense request elicits in turn a silly set of commercial eloquent yet empty statements. Sounds like a Monty Python sketch.

And quite often, amongst the justifications you will find a sentence that says: “The core value of our product is its ability to………..do something fantastic.” Yet I have just said that that the product or service is barely in existence. So how can they make such claims, which can only be based on unproven assumptions?

Is there a methodology that can enable us to understand and then to evaluate the core value of any product or technology?

At the Kahena Digital Marketing Conference last month in Jerusalem, I listened to a lecture by Tal Zilberman, who has worked as product manager for several successful apps. He referred obliquely to lecture by Chamath Plaihptiya, former VP of Facebook and now one of the richest men in Silicon Valley. It is entitled “how we put Facebook on the path to one billion users”.

This 40 minute clip has received barely 8,000 views. And yet its importance for any entrepreneur cannot be overstated!

Chamath has his roots in Sri Lanka and in Canada. One of his first premises is not to make strenuous assumptions. In parallel, understand what it is about your idea that will push people through the door. Then, bring as many of them to that “aha moment” as soon as possible.

Chamath related those concepts to his time at Facebook. The company became fixated on a motto to ” get any individual to 7 friends in 10 days”. That ensured these new customers would become part of a mass market, which was and remains the value of Facebook’s core product. The rest is commentary and add ons.

Facebook’s vision has not really altered since day one. That is why it seemingly vast sums for Instagram and Waze, which with hindsight may have been very reasonable prices.

So, what are you trying to do? And what is it that people will really like about what you are offering? In other words, what do you really have, which is of value to others?