I have run Trends.vc for six years. The product only works if you do.
For people to get value from it, they have to do something. Read the reports. Join masterminds. Show up to standups. Engage with the community. The value requires their participation.
HeadsUp is different. Once a company sets it up, the value arrives without anyone doing anything. A team gets an alert that a competitor changed their pricing. That alert works whether the team is paying attention or not. The value is delivered in the background of their work.
That is a background business.
Uptime monitoring works the same way. Set it up once. If your site goes down at 3 AM, you get the alert. You did not check anything. The tool delivered value while you slept.
Insurance works the same way. You pay the premium. The coverage runs in the background. If something goes wrong, it is already there.
A course is not a background business. You paid for it. But if you do not watch the videos and apply the material, you get nothing. A community is not a background business. You joined. But if you do not attend and engage, you get nothing.
In a background business, the customer receives value by default. If they have to do work to extract it, that is not a background business.
This became one of my filters for evaluating business ideas. Does the customer have to do something to get the value? It might still be a great business. But retention depends on the customer’s motivation. And motivation is unreliable.
Once they are in, they are in. The product works whether they think about it or not.
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What is the one thing your product does for your customer while they sleep?
