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Entrepreneurship & Startups vocabulary · Ideas & Business Models

Pain point

Meaning in entrepreneurship & startups, with examples

/ˈpeɪn pɔɪnt/nounCore term

In entrepreneurship & startups, pain point means: A specific problem or frustration that customers have and that a product can solve. Strong startups are built around real, painful problems.

In Turkish: müşteri sorunu, sıkıntı noktası, dert

How it is used

Used in customer interviews, product meetings and pitches. You identify, discover, address or solve a pain point. Investors like to hear about urgent pain points that customers already spend money or time on.

Example sentences

  1. The biggest pain point for our users is chasing late payments from clients.

  2. In every interview we asked about pain points, not about our solution.

Common collocations

  • identify pain points
  • solve a pain point
  • address a pain point
  • customer pain point
  • real pain point
  • value propositionA short, clear statement of the main benefit a product gives its customers and why they should choose it over other options.
  • customer discoveryThe early process of talking directly to possible customers to understand their problems and test whether your idea is worth building.
  • target marketThe specific group of customers a business plans to sell to first, described by features such as industry, location, size, age or needs.
  • product-market fitThe stage when a product clearly meets a real need in a large enough market, so customers buy it, keep using it and recommend it without much pushing.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Ideas & Business Models

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