Running Lean, 3rd Edition

Chapter 10. Deliver a Mafia Offer Your Customers Cannot Refuse

Make them an offer they can’t refuse…

Adapted quote from The Godfather

With your problem discovery and solution design sprints completed, you now have all the ingredients to assemble and deliver a compelling mafia offer.

In these next two sprints (Figure 10-1), you’re going to put all the insights you’ve painstakingly gathered to the test. This is where the rubber hits the road. Your goal is to secure enough tangible commitments from early adopters to warrant building your MVP.

Before diving into the mafia offer delivery sprint, let’s see what a mafia offer looks like in action.

Figure 10-1. The offer assembly and delivery sprints

Case Study: The iPad Mafia Offer

I still remember Steve Jobs unveiling the original iPhone in 2007. As he opened the keynote, he first set the stage by announcing that Apple was entering the smartphone market with a revolutionary new device that combined three devices in one: a music player, a PDA, and a phone. Then he quickly pointed out the problems with existing smartphones: 40% of the phone is taken up by a plastic keyboard (not smart) and they aren’t very easy to use. Before showing the iPhone, he hinted at its UVP to great effect: What if you could have a phone that was all screen? And instead of using a stylus to control the phone, what if you could use your fingers? That was immediately ...