Becoming Core: From Nice-to-Have to Must-Have

Hey Founder,

For every founder building helpful, nice-to-have products that people like and might pay for. Are you essential? Without you, is the pain immediate and undeniable? With you, is the value obvious and compounding? Are you CORE?

CORE decides how easy you are to ignore in a sales cycle and push to the next quarter. CORE determines how quickly you'll be cut when budgets tighten. It's that simple.

It's not all or nothing. Most solutions start by solving one problem, for one champion, extremely well. But to survive long-term, you must become indispensable. The faster you accelerate your journey to becoming CORE, the safer your business becomes.

LETS GET INTO IT:

CORE = Must-Have + Accretive Value + Deep Dependencies

None of this works without greatness.

The foundation of CORE is a product that does what you say it will, and none of this is a substitute for delivering exceptionally.

Must-Have: Your product solves a problem your customer cannot ignore. It's not a "nice-to-have"; it's essential to their workflow or operation. Without it, something breaks.

Accretive Value: Your product delivers measurable ROI. It justifies its budget allocation by increasing revenue, reducing costs, or improving efficiency (or meeting a compliance requirement).

Deep Dependencies: Your product is integrated across your customer's operations that it's makes it extremely difficult to replace. Switching costs, multi-threaded usage, and organizational reliance make you sticky.

Even if you're a must-have and accretive, without deep dependencies, you're still at risk.

It's why ecosystem marketplaces are so powerful. You use HubSpot, you want to move to Pipedrive but you have dozens of integrations via their marketplace delivering automations, workflows, and therefore the cost, time, and disruption outweigh the savings or additional features.

Without the integrations, you're a must-have + accretive value. With them, you've added deep dependencies across the organization. CORE.

SOL Score: Sh*t Outta Luck?

The easiest way to reconcile CORE is to ask how many steps it would take for you to be Sh*t Outta Luck (SOL)?

The SOL lens isn't just for retention. It's your sales playbook too. If you're easy to cut after the sale, you're just as easy to dismiss during the sales cycle. Designing your product to solve undeniable pain is how you win deals and keep them.

Said simpler. It's the cold emails that get replied to. They hit because they immediately communicate necessity. They solve a problem that's impossible to ignore. The closer you are to being indispensable, the more likely you are to win.

• What happens if your internal sponsor leaves tomorrow?
  (In sales: How many conversations are you having across the organization?)
• Who would notice if your solution disappeared?
  (In sales: Are you highlighting the broad impact of your solution across teams or just focusing on one group?)
• How many business processes would break?
  (In sales: Can you map your solution to critical workflows?)
• How long would it take to replace you?
  (In sales: Are you emphasizing your unique position and switching costs?)
• Would anyone fight to keep you?
  (In sales: Are you creating champions who can defend your deal internally?)

This isn't about product-market fit or whether your product is "good."

The SOL lens forces you to think about impact and indispensability. In sales, it helps you articulate why your solution is more than just "nice to have." Post-sale, it's a reminder to deepen dependencies and embed yourself in the customer's workflows.

Every conversation, every pitch, every integration should move you closer to being CORE. Whether it's a prospect or a customer, the question is always the same: How catastrophic would it be to remove you? The more catastrophic, the closer you are to winning both the deal and long-term relevance.

The CFO Test....

VCs call it "hair on the deal"- everything that makes you less likely to win. If the CFO walks into your customer's office and says, "Cut your spend," are you on the list? If so, that's hair on the deal.

If you're easy to slash, lack internal champions, and your removal wouldn't cause immediate pain, you're at risk. Being CORE means people fight to keep you because removing you would break too much.

Ignore CORE, Just Get In The Door....

You don't have to start as CORE. Most solutions don't.

Day 0 - your goal is simple: Get in the door. Solve one problem. Be liked. Get vendor approval, get through security, get paid, have a customer. That's your entrance. But once you're in, the mission changes. Every day becomes a relentless push to move from "nice-to-have" to CORE.

Here is how you might think about it:

• Map Dependencies: Identify every process that touches your product. Then go create more! Build workflows and integration points across the organization and into the stack. More than just SSO.
• Increase Pain Awareness: Make sure decision-makers feel the pain you're solving. Reports, dashboards, and ROI metrics make your impact undeniable. It is your responsibility to prove your solution value.
• Build Moats: Every feature should increase switching costs. Every integration should make you harder to replace.
• Create Champions: Spread your influence. The more stakeholders who depend on you, the more defenders you'll have when budgets get reviewed.

The Journey to Core

Becoming Core isn't instant. It's a progression:

• Entrance: Solve one problem brilliantly and earn trust.
• Expansion: Prove your value across teams and use cases.
• Embedding: Integrate into workflows so deeply that removing you disrupts operations.
• Core: Become mission-critical—visible to leadership and impossible to replace.

There's no middle ground. The market is getting harder and does not reward "nice-to-have". Budgets are tightening. CFOs are in every deal.

Stay in the fight.

LFG.

-- James