It’s 7:08 a.m. and Clay Christensen is watching man after man pull into the McDonald’s drive-thru. Each of these guys travels alone and orders one item: a milkshake.

McDonald’s already knew the prime demographics for its shakes. With the help of market researchers, the company had focus groups of middle-aged men tell them what they liked and didn’t about its most caloric beverage. Then they changed the product and its marketing in response to these insights.

Only problem? Nothing increased sales.

You might be feeling similar pains as you try to reach developers. You keep telling them why your product is great and, as with the Mickey D’s customers, they’re not lovin’ it.

You might want some insights from that guy peeping at the drive-thru, who happened to be a renowned marketing professor who taught the “Jobs to be Done” approach.​

According to Christensen, the secret is the thickness of the McDonald’s milkshake, which makes it last longer than other alternatives. The morning shake isn’t really about taste or size or sustenance. It’s about diversion.

When we focus on the developer product alone, we miss the developer job to be done… and the other solutions a dev may attempt.

That’s why I think Stripe’s 2011 homepage is so fascinating (and based on reactions, it seems a lot of others agree).

It shows how much that early team knew about the problems with traditional payment solutions of that era.

Gateways and merchant, accounts? No thanks!

Instead, Stripe provided a way to help developers get to the job of writing code.

If Professor Christensen had been watching developers integrate payments in 2011, he probably wouldn’t have been surprised at Stripe’s success.

Need help getting inside the head of the right developers for your product? Reach out to our team and we can discuss (milkshakes optional).