Goal should be to win a utility segment of the customer's utility pie chart

Businesses are an ever-evolving play of customer utility and the solution for the utility. 

I believe that we should try to bet on the utility of the customer, not the product that we are creating to solve a particular problem/utility.

When customers purchase your product/services, they are not buying your product/services. 

They have a problem and they are trying to solve the problem, they have something that they are not able to do/are able to do it very inefficiently - so, in order to move from a lower efficiency state to a higher efficiency state, they are choosing you/your product/your service to fulfil that utility void.

If you can base your products/services on the utility for the customer, your chances of succeeding in your business increase substantially.

You can enter any segment of any business and judge it from the utility lens for the customer - you will get an idea about the following things

• utility-product life cycle
• how much will the customer pay

Personal story:

Before this business, I use to bet our ability to make a product instead of customer utility.

I failed in 5 businesses because I was optimizing for the wrong variable.

Till the time customer has that utility, you can fairly bet that they will pay you for the solution you provided to achieve that utility.