Most startups don’t fail because the idea was bad. They fail because the problem didn’t matter enough to people. And because they were not able to make customer journey enjoyable. This is about customer facing products not infrastructure plays.

You may have heard of Customer Value Chain (CVC), or not. It's one of these things coming from academia that's actually useful, when you use it right.

It’s easy to fall in love with a big vision. But if you're serious about building something people care about, you need to look at how people live their lives - what they do, what annoys them, where they waste time. Ideally, you need a map. This paragraph probably sounds totally foreign to most Web3 builders, and that's a problem.

The map I'm talking about today is called - Customer Value Chain. It’s a simple way to see all the steps a customer takes to solve a problem. Not just when they use your product, but before and after too.

“If you map the journey customers take — not just the moment they use your product — you’ll find the cracks where innovation begins.”
— Thales Teixeira

If you learn how to use this map, you won’t waste time building things no one wants. You’ll find the parts of the journey that are broken - and that’s where your opportunity is. We still have many broken parts in Web3! Even though our tech is the future of many industries.

The beauty of CVC is hidden in the fact that you can find ways to improve existing products 10x or you can see totally new products to be built - that's because your map covers all steps in customer journey, not just those covered by some competitor's product. It will be clear on examples below.

"The Customer Value Chain (CVC) is the sequence of steps a customer must go through to acquire, use, and dispose of a product or service. It captures not just the purchase moment, but the entire end-to-end experience - often across different companies or touchpoints." - fancy definition.

Important fact is that value chain goes often across different companies. Most product teams and founders spend most of their time optimising "their product" journey when sometimes the problem is somewhere else.

Imagine a person trying to get something done. Maybe they want to buy an NFT, stake tokens, or bridge assets from Ethereum to another chain.

They go through a series of steps:

• They got inspired by someone or something

• Looking at options

• Comparing platforms

• Connecting wallets

• Paying gas fees (or scrambling to get the right token to pay fees!)

• Waiting for confirmations

• Using the product or service

• Etc.

This is the Customer Value Chain. It’s every action they take to get the result they want.

Customers, including me, feel the pain of the entire chain of actions. If you can see what they see, feel what they feel, then you can build something that actually helps them.

Notice those weak spots. If you fix one of them, customers will notice. They’ll switch to your product. You don’t need to be better at everything - just at one thing that really matters. When you map, you:

1. See through the customer’s eyes — not the industry’s structure.

2. Uncover friction: pain, cost, delay, or effort at any stage.

3. Spot innovation points that incumbents and others potentially overlook.

4. Prioritize where to enter the market: not by replicating, but by improving.

"No need to disrupt the whole chain. Find the weakest link and start there."

When you break down a customer’s journey, each step fits into one of three buckets:

1. Value-Creating – This is the good stuff. It’s what the customer actually wants to do.

   • Example: Accessing DeFi yields. Owning a digital collectible. Sending funds cross-chain. Or playing a game, taking the medication or taking that flight you booked.
     

2. Value-Capturing – This is where the business makes money.

   • Example: Platform fees. Gas costs. Marketplace royalties, booking fees, hotel room payments.
     

3. Value-Eroding – This is the annoying stuff customers have to do to get to the good stuff.

   • Example: Approving tokens. Paying gas fees. Switching chains and wallets. Managing seed phrases. Or filling forms, researching, and comparing anything. Generally waiting for things (unless waiting creates the perception of value - I write about it in another essay).

Here’s an example from web3:

Most of the steps are still painful. That’s a signal: web3 is full of opportunities to decouple.

And here's a typical business book example from the old world: Getting a Checking Account

Can you see how badly similar my web3 example is to the old bank account? And it doesn't even include researching wallet and chain options. It would be a nightmarish value chain, wouldn't it.

A big name in the world of academic research in this area is Harvard professor Thales Teixeira. He studies how modern startups win and he calls it: decoupling.

Decoupling means finding the worst part of the customer’s journey - and building a product that does just that one part better than anyone else.

It’s not about copying a whole business. It’s about solving one pain point.

Let’s look at this in a web3 context.

Say you want to participate in DeFi but your funds are on a different chain. Most bridges are clunky and risky. A startup like Li.Fi decouples that painful step by becoming the aggregator of bridges and swaps, helping users get the right token on the right chain with less effort. Cool, right!

Or take my recent favorite, Rabby Wallet, which decouples the pain of chain switching and gas payments. It knows which chain you’re interacting with and switches networks automatically and you can pay gas fees all in USDC . That’s value-eroding friction removed.

Other examples:

• Zapper decoupled DeFi portfolio tracking across chains.

• Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) decoupled wallet UX by enabling shared access with smart accounts.

• CoW Swap decoupled trade execution from price discovery to save users gas and MEV.

• PillPack decoupled the complexity of managing daily meds.

• Twitch decoupled watching from playing in video games.

These products didn’t try to replace all of DeFi or fix whole pharmacy concept. They found a broken step and did it better. Maybe they used CVC mapping or maybe not - but they definitely notice friction and solved for it.

Let’s look at what used to happen when creators launched NFTs in early days:

Now, tools like Manifold and Zora have removed many of these headaches:

These tools decoupled the developer overhead from the NFT launch experience. Now creators can focus much more on their art and audience, not the tech.

I believe now it's clear how customer value chain and decoupling can be useful to anyone who's looking to start a new business or pivot existing one. So, let's get practical. You don’t need fancy tools. You just need curiosity.

Here’s how to begin:

1. Pick something you don't like or want to change: can be bridging, minting, claiming airdrops, or walking the dog and filling forms.

2. Write down all the steps one needs to take to get to intended result.

3. Label each step:

   • Does it create value?

   • Does it capture value?

   • Does it erode value?

4. Look for the worst step - the one people hate or try to avoid (or would avoid if possible).

That’s where your opportunity can be.

I used similar approach to find several profitable niches for my iPad publishing startup back in the day when I moved to San Francisco. Believe me, it works - not because it's magic, but because it adds perspective to your process.

Don't worry about being perfect. It's about repetitions and careful observation. If you do this again and again in different verticals and industries - DeFi, NFTs, identity, privacy, messaging - you’ll start to see patterns. You’ll find hidden pain. That’s what great business ideas are made of.

And believe me, even after 10-15 years of blockchain tech growth, there's so much pain involved in everything Web3 offers that your opportunities are endless. I hope it was clear that this framework is best used for customer facing products. You won't find your next infra play this way.

You can map this out on paper. But if you want digital tools, here are some good (and free) ones:

• Miro – Great for visual mapping

• Figma / FigJam – Good for team brainstorming

• Fibery – Great for mapping, has canvas you can connect with structured information

• Obsidian - has pretty good canvas functionality coupled with notes and it's on-device only so truly yours!

• Notion – Keeps notes and steps organized, although still doesn't have a drawing canvas

Don’t be like me, don't get stuck in the tools. Focus on seeing the journey. Don't do it alone. Bring friends. Or join one of my future webinars! 😉

If this clicks for you, here are some resources to find and go deeper:

• "Unlocking the Customer Value Chain" - book by Thales Teixeira

• “Disruption by Decoupling” – Harvard Business Review article

• IDEO’s Design Kit – Learn how to observe and map customer behavior (it's the best universal tool for every founder!)

• Strategyzer’s Value Proposition Design – Match solutions to pain points and make sure you know how to create value.

Startup success doesn’t usually come from having the best idea. It comes from solving the most painful problem and not dying along the way.

Mapping the Customer Value Chain helps you see clearly where people struggle. It shows you the cracks in the system. And it gives you a place to start.

I hope that many crypto splinters will be removed from our Web3 days by smart folks like you. I'd love to hear which ones are on you list? Was this useful? Shoot me an email or just DM.

Till next time, let's BUILD BETTER!

Pete (aka BFG)

Coming Up Next:

In the upcoming essays I will look at what are potential underdog themes and edge ideas that present opportunities for small, fast-moving teams while everyone else is still looking the other way.

And, in case you missed the articles about broader macro economic cycles and where we're probably heading now, I'd recommend to check them both.

• How Tech and Financial Cycles Map On Today

• Technology Cycles and The Anti-FOMO Playbook For Web3 Builders
  

Stay tuned 😉
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