Your Proposition - So What, Who Cares

I absolutely love talking to founders. I really listen to their journey and am genuinely enthusiastic for every one of them. But there's something I've noticed many, many times.

They can tell you what their business does. But few can tell you - succinctly, clearly and without warming up for ten minutes first - why a stranger should care.

Those are two completely different articulations. And the gap between them has a real cost. Lost time to market. Delayed funding conversations. Sales cycles that stall before they've properly started. Channels that never open because the right person never quite understood what was on offer.

A businesswoman I admire enormously instilled a mantra into me some years ago. I use it constantly now - on other people's thinking and on my own.

So what. Who cares.

Four words. Devastating when the answer isn't there. Invaluable when it forces you to find one.

Proposition problems don't all look the same. Sometimes the message is unclear. Sometimes the timing is wrong. Sometimes the language only works for the audience you already have.

The Inside-Out Trap

I had a conversation recently with a founder who has spent years developing a genuinely compelling framework for helping businesses grow with more rigour and less guesswork. The thinking is strong. The methodology is sound. The problem she's solving is real.

But for most of our conversation, I had no clear idea why I should care.

Not because she wasn't articulate. On the contrary, she was totally fluent and not because the idea wasn't good. It was. But she was explaining it from the inside out - walking me through how she thinks, what she's built, why the framework works - before she'd given me any reason to be curious about the outcome. I kept thinking, great journey, what's the destination.

Eventually, almost as an aside, she mentioned the thing that should have opened the conversation. A specific, concrete promise tied to a specific, concrete result. Something a business could immediately picture and want.

She'd spent the best part of two years arriving at that line. And then buried it.

I've seen this pattern lots of times - and I've been guilty of it too. It’s not founder flaw - it's a founder trap. When you've lived inside an idea long enough, you can't see it the way a stranger does. You explain the journey because you're on it - you live and breathe it. The stranger just wants to know what's in it for them.

The four words are embedded in my thinking now but only because I've fallen into the trap myself more times than I'd like to admit.

A while back I did what I thought was a genuinely strong piece of work. Helping a business evaluate what was wrong with an existing proposition and how it needed to change to become a commercial asset in a different sector. I'd iterated carefully, trying to limit the capital investment required. I'd worked through it properly and then I pitched it.

I could see it the moment I started speaking. I'd shaped the proposition before I'd established the need. I hadn't answered the buyer's most basic question - what's in it for me - before I'd arrived at my answer. The work was good, but the sequencing was wrong.

So what. Who cares. In that moment - I hadn't asked either.

But sometimes the proposition problem isn't about how you explain it. It's about whether the world is ready to receive it.

Ahead of the Curve

Shazam is a brilliant example of this playing out at scale - but not for the reason you may think.

The technology worked from the beginning. Point a phone at a song, identify it in seconds. In 2002 that was genuinely extraordinary. But for years the proposition didn't land - not because the product was wrong and not because the founders couldn't explain it. The world simply hadn't built the infrastructure to receive it yet. The barrier wasn't clarity. It was timing.

Shazam's answer was a stay alive pivot. They sold their core technology to a third party for B2B use - keeping only a license for the consumer business. It wasn't the plan. It was survival. But it kept them in the game long enough for the iPhone App Store to arrive and make the consumer proposition suddenly, obviously and frictionlessly available to everyone.

Dhiraj Mukherjee, one of Shazam's co-founders, reflected that as a founder you see the world from the inside out. The people who helped them most were the ones who brought the outside in - who asked not just what the product does, but what it would actually take for someone to say yes, right now, in the market as it currently exists.

Is your proposition unclear - or is it simply waiting for conditions that don't fully exist yet? And if it's the latter, what's your stay alive pivot while you wait?

And sometimes it's neither of those things. Sometimes the proposition is right, the timing is right - but the language only works for the audience you already have.

Talking Japanese

Not every proposition problem is about a weak product or an unclear idea. Sometimes the product is genuinely strong - differentiated, considered and built with real care. The problem is that the commercial language hasn't kept pace with where the business needs to go.

I know a founder building something in the lifestyle space that is genuinely distinctive. The product quality is there. The values behind it are clear. In the right room, with the right buyer who already speaks the language, it's immediately compelling.

But move it into a new channel - corporate hospitality, wholesale distribution, a procurement conversation with someone whose primary concern is ROI, workforce engagement or ESG compliance and the founder's language doesn't travel. The proposition was built for buyers who already care about what makes it different. The new buyer needs to be shown why they should care before they'll listen to what makes it different.

So it’s not a product problem - it's a translation problem. And it's one of the most common barriers I see when founder-led businesses try to break into new markets or channels with a proposition that was built for the audience they already have.

The same challenge shows up in established businesses trying to evolve into new markets. A proven proposition in one environment doesn't automatically travel into another. The product might be identical, but the buyer isn't. A buyer in a new channel has different pressures, different trigger points and different reasons to care - none of which the existing proposition was built to speak to.

What worked through personal relationships and word of mouth in one market won't necessarily survive a corporate procurement process, a wholesale distribution channel or a new geographic territory. The new buyer has no reason to lean in and work out what's on offer unless it solves a problem they recognise today.

This is where so what, who matters the most. Not as a criticism but as a discipline. Asking it about your own proposition - honestly, from the perspective of someone who has never encountered your business before - is one of the most uncomfortable and most useful things a founder can do.

Most don't. Not due to complacency. Because they're too close to it.

What the Stranger Actually Sees

Propositions are specific. Markets are specific. The right language for one buyer is the wrong language for another. I'd be wary of anyone who tells you there's a single answer to this.

But it's worth taking the time to look way beyond the reflection in the mirror.

Can you explain what you do and why it matters to the person in front of you - in the time it takes to travel four floors in a lift? Not just what you do. Why they should care.

And when did you last hear your proposition from the outside in - from someone with no prior knowledge of your business, no reason to be polite and no investment in making it sound better than it is?