Harvard Business Publishing

Bagged lettuce.

That's what I tell people when they ask me what Jamseed's business model is.

"But I thought it was some sort of site for musicians to get money," they ask. "And isn't that something they can already do? They don't need you."

Yes and no. Yes, we are trying to find ways for fans to support musicians. And yes, musicians can do everything our site offers by themselves: ask fans for money, sell their music, sell merchandise, promote themselves, interact with their fans, etc.

But no, what's really important to my startup company is the same thing that's important to every company: customers. And what customers want isn't a nifty idea--what they want is something that fills a need in their life.

Bagged lettuce.

A bag of pre-washed and cut lettuce costs around 4 times as much as a plain old head of green stuff. And yet, even though there are people who have a knife, colander, time on their hands, and been criticized by their smart-alecky friends for wasting money, my local supermarket still sells plenty of the bagged stuff.

And precut fruit. Presliced deli meat. Marinated pork chops. Precooked chickens. Entire prepared Thanksgiving dinners with cranberry sauce and plastic forks. Come to think of it, if people did everything for themselves rather than turning to businesses there'd be no supermarkets, no restaurants, no "middlemen" who provide value by doing things for you rather than making something of their own.

So the question is not "how good is our idea" but how easy are we making the lives of our customers, and what makes our bagged lettuce the one to buy?

Well, that's a blog for another day.

What do you think? Is bagged lettuce a good metaphor? Do middlemen serve a purpose or is the Internet all about removing intermediaries? Should entrepreneurs focus on providing unique value or the best value of an already well-understood commodity?