Have been helping early stage start ups to find their niche, raise funds and build successful teams. I specialize in e commerce, consulting, health & Fitness and life coaching
Helping you understand the market you are entering and the need you are addressing. What is that customers will look ahead in your organization and help you grow as you deliver value.
This is something which makes or breaks the entire product road-map. If anyone cracks this to a good extent, they will have a solid, sustainable product. However what many startups fail to understand is that it is about the experience now and not just the desired out put from the product.
As you have rightly asked in your question (beyond product), I would strongly recommend creating a mind map of your end user and highlighting the areas which will trigger the user to use your product and then the areas which will just add sweetness to the usage. Once you create a mind map, test it with different user profiles to build it more robust and clear.
Essentially, there should two or max three steps prior to the actual usage which will trigger a user to use the product and similarly two or max three steps post usage which will only sweeten the deal for him and make him stick for long.