"People don’t buy products or services; they pull them into their lives to make progress." – Clayton M. Christensen
There’s a moment in every founder’s journey when they ask themselves: Why did this customer buy from me? And why didn’t the other one?
Most startups stumble through this question, guessing their way forward, tinkering with features, optimizing their marketing, and hoping—just hoping—that product-market fit will magically arrive. They think if they just keep throwing things at the wall, something will stick.
But hope isn’t a strategy.
This is where Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christensen delivers a gut punch of clarity. It pulls back the curtain on what really drives customers to buy and introduces one of the most powerful frameworks a founder can use: Jobs to Be Done (JTBD).
If you get this, really get it, you’ll never waste time guessing again. You’ll know exactly how to build something people can’t live without.
NOTE: RCY Labs has curated a list of 52 books for Founders (2025 Edition) who care about business profitability AND impact. Don't have time to read all 52 books? We've got you! We'll read them for you, and give you the summaries, audio casts, outlines, and frameworks to apply to your business ... all FREE in the Founders' Lab Community (on Slack). Join here.
For decades, companies have been operating under an illusion—believing that innovation is a game of luck. That success is a mixture of good timing, the right team, and maybe a sprinkle of divine intervention.
And sure, sometimes lightning strikes. But more often, businesses fail because they don’t deeply understand what their customers actually need.
I see this all the time with early-stage founders—grinding away at features, running A/B tests, fine-tuning messaging, all without asking the fundamental question:
This isn’t about demographics or personas. Customers don’t buy products because they fit into a category or a market segment. They “hire” products to solve problems in their lives, to make progress in ways that matter to them.
And when you understand that? You stop gambling. You start engineering demand.
One of the most famous examples from the book is what I like to call The Milkshake Epiphany.
A fast-food chain wanted to sell more milkshakes. So, like any data-driven company, they looked at the usual suspects—age, gender, flavors, pricing strategies. But nothing moved the needle.
Then they tried something radical: Instead of asking Who buys our milkshakes?, they asked, Why do people buy milkshakes at all?
And that’s when they discovered something surprising. The biggest milkshake buyers were commuters who needed something to keep them occupied on their long, boring drives to work.
These people weren’t buying milkshakes for the taste. They were hiring milkshakes to:
That insight changed everything. Instead of focusing on flavors or promotions, the company designed a milkshake that solved this specific job—thicker, easier to hold, more convenient for mornings.
Sales took off.
Now, let’s pause. Because the implications of this are massive.
Most founders build products the way this fast-food chain originally did—guessing, optimizing based on traditional data, trying to win over customers with surface-level tweaks. But the winners—the ones who scale, who create category-defining companies—get laser-focused on solving real jobs better than anything else.
People are already hacking together solutions to solve their problems. Your biggest competitor isn’t always another company—it’s non-consumption (the customer doing nothing) or a workaround they’ve cobbled together that does just enough to get by.
Think about it.
When Slack launched, it wasn’t just competing with email. It was competing with a messy collection of workarounds—email threads, text messages, fragmented conversations happening across different tools. Slack won by solving the job of seamless, real-time team communication better than anything else.
When Airbnb started, it didn’t just compete with hotels. It competed with people crashing on friends’ couches, scanning Craigslist for rentals, or settling for cheap motels. Airbnb’s real job wasn’t just “providing accommodations.” It was offering an affordable, authentic, local travel experience—one that made guests feel at home anywhere.
What workaround are your customers using right now because they don’t know something better exists?
Find that, and you’ll find demand hiding in plain sight.
Understanding Jobs to Be Done isn’t a theory—it’s an operating system for how you build, sell, and market your product. Here’s how to put it into action:
Stop focusing on personas and demographics. Instead, watch what people are actually struggling with. If you can uncover their pain points, you’ll see where new opportunities exist.
Ask questions like:
People don’t switch products randomly. There’s always a trigger—some frustration, need, or life change that pushes them over the edge.
Identify these moments. If you can be there when the frustration peaks, you’ll win.
Founders love to talk about features. But customers don’t care about features—they care about outcomes.
Instead of saying, “We offer AI-powered analytics,” say, “Never waste hours sifting through spreadsheets again.”
Instead of saying, “Our CRM has robust integrations,” say, “Keep every sales conversation in one place—without jumping between tools.”
Sell the job you’re solving, not the specs of what you’ve built.
There’s something deeply liberating about Competing Against Luck. It removes the mystery from why some products succeed while others fade into irrelevance.
The companies that win—really win—aren’t the ones with the best technology or the most funding. They’re the ones that solve the right jobs, at the right time, in a way that makes switching feel obvious.
And if you want to build something that lasts, something that scales, something that people don’t just use but depend on—this is your playbook.
Because in the end, it’s not about luck. It’s about knowing what job you’re really being hired to do—and doing it better than anyone else.
If this resonated, share it with a founder who needs to hear it. And if you’re rethinking your product through the lens of Jobs to Be Done, I’d love to hear what insights you uncover.
Now, let’s go build something the world can’t live without.
NOTE: RCY Labs has curated a list of 52 books for Founders (2025 Edition) who care about business profitability AND impact. Don't have time to read all 52 books? We've got you! We'll read them for you, and give you the summaries, audio casts, outlines, and frameworks to apply to your business ... all FREE in the Founders' Lab Community (on Slack). Join here.