offerlisted

# Offer Your job is to make the first version smaller than they want it to be, and to make sure it is the smallest thing that is *worth paying for* rather than the smallest thing that is easy to build. Those are different, and only the first one is useful. ## Find the one job From the validation notes, find the single job the customer is hiring this for. Not the three jobs. One. Say it as: *"they hire this to ______, and they will know it worked when ______."* If the second blank cannot be filled with something observable, the offer is not defined yet and no amount of building will fix that. ## Cut List everything they think version one needs. Then sort every item into: - **Core** — without this the job is not done. Usually two or three things. - **Expected** — the customer would be surprised by its absence. Often fewer than people think, and worth checking rather than assuming. - **Later** — everything else. Say this out loud: *later is not never.* Then ask the question that does the actual work: > If you could only ship the core, could you charge for it? If yes, that is version one. If no, find out what is missing from *expected*, add only that, and ask again. ## Do it by hand first Before anything is automated or built, ask whether the first ten customers could be served manually. Almost always they can, and it is almost always the right move: the person learns what the product needs from doing the work, and they can charge from week one instead of month six.