Table of Contents

• Introduction: Why Real JTBD Examples Drive Growth
• How We Use JTBD to Create Superior Equity Value
• How AutoQuotes Used JTBD to Drive Growth in a Mature Market
• How Biscom Used JTBD to Pivot Beyond Traditional Services
• How Target's Registry Team Reversed Declining Revenue
• Key Patterns That Create Equity Value Across Our Portfolio Companies
• Conclusion: JTBD is Our Foundation for Accelerating Growth

Introduction: Why Real JTBD Examples Drive Growth

Jobs to be Done (JTBD) has helped our portfolio companies shift from building features to delivering real customer value and accelerating growth. But for many product teams, the gap between theory and application still feels wide. What does JTBD look like when implemented effectively? How do teams identify and validate customer jobs? And most importantly, what impact does it have on equity value?

Theory isn't enough. Frameworks only create value when they're executed effectively, and our most successful portfolio companies use JTBD not just as a research tool, but as a decision-making framework across product, marketing, and sales. Whether refining positioning, choosing what to build next, or aligning stakeholders, our JTBD method offers clarity and drives growth.

In this article, we'll show you how our portfolio companies use JTBD to:

• Uncover unmet customer needs
• Align cross-functional teams on outcomes
• Prioritize roadmap decisions that accelerate growth
• Create superior equity returns with less risk

Each example includes practical insight into the company's process, results, and key takeaways. Whether you're new to JTBD or looking to improve your growth strategy, these real-world cases will help you see how our method creates equity value.

How We Use JTBD to Create Superior Equity Value

Our portfolio companies recognize that customers don't buy products or features—they "hire" them to make progress in specific circumstances. This fundamental shift in thinking changes how we define markets, develop products, and communicate value.

Instead of competing on features or technological advantages, we focus on understanding the progress customers are trying to make. This customer-centric approach enables more strategic decision-making across the organization:

• Market Definition: We define markets based on customer jobs rather than product categories or technologies.
• Product Strategy: Our development priorities shift from feature parity to addressing underserved job steps.
• Go-to-Market: Our messaging focuses on customer progress rather than product capabilities.

At thrv, our proprietary JTBD platform organizes each job into 10-20 steps with 50-100 measurable customer needs. This structured approach helps our portfolio companies make better decisions that accelerate growth and create equity value with less risk.

The case studies that follow demonstrate how our approach has helped real companies achieve remarkable results across different industries and circumstances.

How AutoQuotes Used JTBD to Drive Growth in a Mature Market

In 2020, AutoQuotes, a prominent online foodservice equipment marketplace, faced the challenge of sustaining growth in a mature market where it already had deep penetration. The company needed innovative strategies to deliver additional customer value and drive revenue growth amidst a rapidly evolving industry landscape.

What Job Was Identified?

By working with our team to apply the JTBD methodology, AutoQuotes shifted their focus from simply providing quotes to helping customers "efficiently select, price, and purchase foodservice equipment that meets specific operational needs." This broader job definition opened up new opportunities beyond their core quoting function.

How Was It Validated?

Using our JTBD platform, AutoQuotes implemented a comprehensive approach to validate these customer jobs:

• Product Strategy Workshop: We helped the team identify key customers, distinguish between job beneficiaries and executors, define customers' jobs-to-be-done, and assess the competitive landscape across job steps.
• Customer Research: We conducted qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys to validate customer insights, ensuring alignment between the operating team, board, and employees regarding customer needs.
• Decision-Making Alignment: We developed a new product roadmapping process that aligned the operating team, board, and employees with customer needs, leading to more accurate and strategic product development investments.

What Were the Results?

Our JTBD framework yielded significant results for AutoQuotes:

• Revenue Growth: Despite the challenges of 2020, AutoQuotes achieved business growth, with new products contributing to 30% of new bookings.
• Enhanced Product Development: Our JTBD approach enabled the company to identify market opportunities previously unseen, leading to more informed and effective product development decisions.
• Organizational Alignment: Our methodology provided a common language for understanding customer goals and problems, aligning the operating team, board, and employees, and improving the overall decision-making process.
• Equity Value Creation: These improvements led to significant multiple expansion for the business, generating superior returns for investors.

Takeaway: Even in mature markets, our JTBD method can reveal overlooked opportunities for growth by expanding your understanding of the customer's complete job, creating substantial equity value in the process.

How Biscom Used JTBD to Pivot Beyond Traditional Services

In 2022, Biscom, a 30-year-old fax services company, sought to change its business model to address more complex customer challenges beyond traditional fax services. Recognizing the limitations of their existing offerings, the CEO aimed to pivot towards solving more significant problems for clients, particularly in the healthcare sector where secure information handling is critical.

What Job Was Identified?

Using our JTBD platform, Biscom shifted its focus from "fax services" to the job of "securely sending, receiving, and acting upon private health information." This redefinition changed how the company viewed its market and opportunities.

How Was It Validated?

To facilitate this transformation, we implemented our Jobs-to-be-Done methodology through several key steps:

• Market Redefinition: We helped Biscom shift focus from "fax services" to the clearly-defined job of "securely sending, receiving, and acting upon private health information."
• Job Mapping: Our team identified 17 critical steps and over 100 customer needs within the job of secure information handling.
• Strategic Alignment: We aligned product development, marketing, and sales efforts with the identified unmet needs to create a cohesive growth strategy.

What Were the Results?

Our JTBD framework led to significant outcomes for Biscom:

• Accelerated Growth: Biscom tripled its growth rate over the years 2022 and 2023.
• Enhanced Customer Engagement: By addressing more complex customer problems, Biscom improved its value proposition, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Successful Exit: The strategic transformation and accelerated growth culminated in a successful exit for Biscom's private equity sponsor, achieving an expanded valuation multiple just two years after the acquisition.

As ParkerGale Partner Cici Zheng noted: "Understanding our customer's problems with their job-to-be-done in contrast to their problems with our product uncovered actionable growth opportunities the company would have otherwise missed."

Takeaway: Our JTBD method helps mature companies pivot beyond their traditional offerings by redefining their market around customer goals rather than existing solutions, creating substantial equity value through multiple expansion.

How Target's Registry Team Reversed Declining Revenue

In 2016, Target's Registry team faced declining revenue and was losing market share to Amazon. The team found themselves in a reactive position, continually trying to match Amazon's features without achieving significant growth. This approach led to stagnation, with the team struggling to differentiate Target's offerings in the competitive retail landscape.

What Job Did We Identify?

Rather than focusing on registry as a product feature, we helped Target redefine their understanding around the customer's job of "preparing for life's major milestones by acquiring necessary items with help from friends and family." This broader definition allowed them to identify unmet needs beyond feature parity with competitors.

How Did We Validate It?

To address these challenges, Target worked with our team to implement our Jobs-to-be-Done methodology. This approach shifted the team's focus from competing on features to understanding and fulfilling the underlying jobs that customers aimed to accomplish.

By identifying these core customer needs, the team could develop solutions that directly addressed them, moving beyond the cycle of feature imitation. The validation process included extensive customer research and quantitative analysis of which job steps were most underserved by existing solutions—all conducted using our JTBD platform.

What Were the Results?

Our JTBD framework led to a significant transformation within Target's Registry team:

• Revenue Growth: Within 12 to 18 months of implementing JTBD, the team reversed the declining revenue trend, achieving over 25% top-line growth annually.
• Customer Satisfaction: There was a 20% increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS), indicating enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Market Leadership: Target transitioned from being a follower to a leader in the market. Notably, Amazon began replicating features that Target introduced, signaling Target's innovative edge.
• Team Alignment and Focus: Our JTBD approach fostered a unified vision within the team, leading to better alignment and more effective execution of strategies.

As Matt Bjornson, Director of Product Management at Target, reported: "This was the best investment that we've made... I had multiple people saying, 'This is the best thing that we've ever done at Target.' We were really successful."

By centering their strategy around the actual jobs customers sought to complete, Target's Registry team not only revitalized their growth but also established a sustainable competitive advantage in the retail sector.

Takeaway: Instead of playing catchup with competitors' features, focusing on customer jobs can transform a follower into a market leader, creating substantial equity value through accelerated revenue growth.

Key Patterns That Create Equity Value Across Our Portfolio Companies

When we look across our portfolio companies, some clear patterns emerge that drive equity value creation:

1. Jobs aren't features—they're outcomes that drive growth.
   • Our portfolio companies that define success through customer progress build more impactful features.
   • Features become tools to achieve outcomes, not ends in themselves.
   • This focus leads to faster revenue growth and creates equity value.
2. Customer research is foundational to reducing risk.
   • JTBD success depends on uncovering real-world struggles through qualitative interviews and quantitative validation.
   • Our platform helps teams dig deep into emotional and contextual insights, not just surface needs.
   • This reduces the risk of building products that don't resonate with customers.
3. Market definitions expand to create more opportunities.
   • Our portfolio companies redefine their markets around jobs (rather than products or technologies) to discover new growth opportunities.
   • This expansion allows even mature companies to find renewed growth.
   • Expanded market definitions increase total addressable market and equity value.
4. Roadmaps become clearer and more impactful.
   • With our JTBD method, priorities are based on unmet needs and opportunity scores.
   • This prevents overbuilding and supports faster iteration.
   • Clear roadmaps deliver more customer value in less time, accelerating growth.
5. Organizational alignment improves execution.
   • Teams share a common language and understanding of customer goals.
   • This alignment accelerates decision-making and reduces internal friction.
   • Better execution means faster time to market and more efficient use of resources.
6. Growth follows customer understanding.
   • The better you understand your customer's job, the better you can serve it and expand.
   • Our JTBD method unlocks long-term loyalty and repeat usage.
   • This drives sustainable growth and equity value creation.

Our JTBD method isn't just theory. It's a system that turns customer insight into strategic clarity, accelerated growth, and superior equity returns.

How to Start Applying Our JTBD Method in Your SaaS Company

If these examples show the potential of our approach, here are first steps you can take:

• Interview customers using outcome-driven questions
  
  
  • Don't ask what features they want—ask what they're trying to accomplish and what's getting in the way.
  • Use the structure of situation, struggle, and desired outcome to guide conversations.
• Map your customer's job by steps of progress
  
  
  • Break down the job into steps: what happens before, during, and after using your product.
  • Identify friction points and success markers along the way.
• Segment users by job, not persona
  
  
  • Personas often focus on traits; jobs focus on intent and context.
  • Group customers who are trying to make the same progress, even if they look different on paper.
• Prioritize features by impact on job success
  
  
  • Use quantitative methods like job importance vs. satisfaction to find high-opportunity areas.
  • Focus development on helping customers make faster or easier progress.
• Align your messaging with the job your product solves
  
  
  • Rewrite your homepage, ads, and onboarding to reflect customer goals, not features.
  • Customers don't buy software—they hire it to get a job done.
• Develop a common language across teams
  
  
  • Create templates and frameworks that incorporate job steps and customer needs into product briefs, marketing plans, and sales materials.
  • Ensure everyone understands how their work contributes to helping customers achieve their goals.

Our platform is built to guide teams through every phase of Jobs to be Done—from research to roadmap. We help portfolio companies implement these steps and align their teams around customer jobs to create equity value faster and with less risk.

Conclusion: JTBD is Our Foundation for Accelerating Growth

These real-world examples show how our Jobs to be Done method isn’t just a change in language - it creates equity value. By focusing on the progress your customers are trying to make, we help you build better products, accelerate growth, and strengthen customer relationships.

The most successful organizations don't just collect customer feedback—they understand the underlying jobs their customers are hiring products to do. This deeper understanding enables companies to:

• Discover opportunities competitors miss
• Prioritize product investments with greater confidence
• Align teams around customer outcomes, not just deliverables
• Create messaging that resonates with customer goals
• Measure success in terms of customer progress, not just feature adoption

Whether you're scaling your SaaS product, repositioning in a competitive market, or launching something new, our JTBD method can be your unfair advantage for creating equity value faster and with less risk.

Book your demo to see how our JTBD platform helps portfolio companies accelerate growth and create equity value faster—with less risk.