Before you Invest, you start a STARTUP or a Business Plan: Have a Value Proposition That Actually Holds Value

Most entrepreneurs claim to know their customer. They stand on stages, pitch to investors, and polish their decks with the perfect “value proposition.” Yet, when you scratch beneath the surface, many of these statements are nothing more than assumptions wrapped in ego.

At hugoaristides.com, I’ve written before about how perception is misguided by ego — we assume we know what our clients value, but we rarely go and live their experience. That is the fundamental gap this Value Proposition Matrix is meant to close.

The Methodology: Rows and Columns

The structure is simple. Entrepreneurs fill the cross-sections between rows and columns to force themselves to articulate, validate, and measure.

Rows (what you want to test)

1. The Promise: Core Value Proposition – the main benefit you claim.

2. Key Feature: Enabler 1 – first important feature that makes the promise possible.

3. Key Feature: Enabler 2 – second feature.

4. Key Feature: Enabler 3 – third feature.

5. Substantiators: Proof Points – data or facts that support your claim.

6. Gemba Walk 1 – first customer visit/observation.

7. Gemba Walk 2 – second visit.

8. Gemba Walk 3 – third visit.

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Columns (how you test it)

1. Customer Verifiers – what real customers said that confirms it.

2. Evidence / Quotes Showing Pain (Short Phrases) – direct phrases customers use to describe their problem.

3. Financial KPI Value to End User $ – the measurable impact in dollars.

4. How to Monetize This Key Input – how your business captures that value.

5. Do Competitors Do the Same (Y/N) – check if others already offer this.

6. Why Will the Channel Prefer You – why distributors or partners would choose you.

7. Notes – insights, open questions, or risks.

Each intersection forces you to answer one hard question: How do I know this is real and not just my wishful thinking?

Why Entrepreneurs Fail at This Step

Too often, entrepreneurs build in a bubble:

• They think the customer wants speed, when in reality the customer is desperate for reliability.

• They believe a flashy feature is the winner, while the client would rather have a boring but affordable solution.

• They calculate their TAM in billions but never bother to sit in the shoes of a single paying client.

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This happens because they don’t live the client experience. They sell to an imagined persona instead of a breathing, frustrated human.

Opening Perception Beyond Ego

True entrepreneurship begins when you open your perception. When you resist the temptation to jump into conclusions and instead allow yourself to be surprised by reality.

A determined entrepreneur with a vision must learn to channel what I call the “enchanted channel”: that state of openness where your mission feels almost like destiny, where your transcendental motivation pushes you to find the real value you can offer to society.

This is not about being clever. It’s about being receptive. It’s about allowing experience — yours and your clients’ — to connect like dots on a canvas until a picture emerges. And that picture is not just a business model; it is a spiritual connection with the value you can return to society in gratitude for all the good you have received.

When you operate from that state, your business stops being just a machine for profit and becomes a vehicle of reciprocity. A way to give back. A way to translate your life mission into tangible value for others.

The Discipline of Gemba Walks and Mystery Shopping

The Japanese word Gemba means “the real place” — where value is created, where the client struggles and decides. A Gemba Walk is not a theoretical survey; it’s you, the entrepreneur, walking into the customer’s reality.

👉 Do mystery shopping.👉 Use your MVP as if you were a paying client.👉 Record the friction, the waiting, the confusion, the delight.👉 Capture quotes verbatim that reveal the pain.

Do not wait until your product is ready. The Lean Startup already taught us: launch early, test reality, adjust fast. But even that approach is incomplete if you only measure vanity metrics. You must confront the customer’s felt pain and lived experience.

From Value to Monetization (Not the Other Way Around)

When entrepreneurs chase money first, they miss the point. Society rewards value creation, not greed.

If your matrix is filled with authentic verifiers, if your Gemba walks are rich with notes, if your quotes make you uncomfortable because they contradict your assumptions — then and only then should you even think about monetization.

And here’s the truth: if the value is real, monetization will follow.

A Critical Warning

Do not spend a dollar until your Value Proposition Matrix and your Price–Value Map are crystal clear to anybody you show them to — supported by:

• Customer verifier sessions

• Real quotes captured during Gemba walks

• Proof points grounded in KPIs

  
  

Only then are you ready to scale. Otherwise, you’re just financing your ego.

✅ The Value Proposition Matrix is not just a tool. It is a discipline.✅ It forces humility.✅ It ensures your business grows from real human value, not imaginary pitch decks.✅ And above all: it honors the deeper calling of entrepreneurship — to serve, to connect, to return value to the society that nurtured you.

The challenge is simple: Will you open your perception to live your customer’s pain and your own mission? Or will you keep guessing from your office chair?

Now visit the google sheet template. Send me a message of schedule a session to discuss how to apply the Value Proposition template to your business. You will see the price value map as well, that will have its own blog post as well. Here the link to the google sheet

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