A one pager is the document that holds your whole product strategy in one place: why this product exists, who it is for, what problems it solves and what it is not going to do.

If you cannot explain your product idea in one page, you do not understand it well enough. I stand by that.

One pager does not mean one page, though. It means one continuous page, everything consolidated in the same place. The length depends on where you work. Some companies say it should be a page, at others it is six or seven.

Where it sits

The one pager is why. The PRD is what.

The one pager is the high level of the entire product and the reason you are building it. The PRD is what you are actually building, feature by feature.

Together with your research they make up your strategy package, which is the thing you end up with and the thing you hand to anyone who needs to understand the product before they work on it.

If you are working on your own, this is the one I would not skip. Building out a deck for an audience of one is overkill. What you want is a single document that is your north star, that says what you are building, and that you can reread in six months when you have drifted without noticing.

What goes in it

• An overview and the goals
• A review of customer problems, as a high level summary of the biggest problems you saw
• Who it is for, meaning your persona
• The solution direction at a high level
• A questions area
• An out of scope area

Put your unique value proposition right at the top, before any of it. It is your five second pitch, and if it is not the first thing on the page you will find yourself explaining your product from the middle.

The last two in that list are the ones people leave off, and they are the ones that make the document honest. The questions area is where you write down what you still do not know, so that it is visible instead of quietly unresolved. Out of scope is where you record the things you decided not to do, so that they stay decided. It does not mean you will never address it. Knowing the problem exists, and knowing why you are not addressing it right now, is the part that is worth writing down.

Leave the projections out

Do not bother with financial projections, or even growth projections like user account numbers. Keep that out of a document like this, because it sets false expectations with stakeholders.

If the market size matters to the decision, a market section with basic numbers is fine, along with commentary about the shape of it. Something like: this is a very niche market, and growth might be slow because you have to find the people. That is useful and true, and it is different from a hockey stick you invented.

The part that comes back later

Whatever the core problem is on your one pager, the primary problem your product solves and not the little feature problem statements, that is the thing you want your user to know the answer to by the end of onboarding.

That is a direct line from a strategy document to a screen you will build months later, and it is one of the reasons the document is worth writing carefully.

Write it before the wireframes

When I started thinking about my nanny app, I planned the app before I planned the company. I did a lot of research online, went through everything, and came out of it with a big one pager, and then wireframes after that.

The order matters. The one pager is the thing you can change cheaply. Everything after it costs more.

One thing to hold back when you share it: leave out how the solution works. Describe what the product does and what it is for, and stop there. If you hand a designer the mechanics along with the problem, you have biased them before they have had a single idea of their own.

Keep reading

What Is a PRD and Do I Need One If I'm Building Alone?

How to Write a Problem Statement for Your App

App Idea vs. App Strategy: What's the Difference and Why It Matters

Learn this with me

The one pager is class 6 of From Passion to Product, my free six-week live course, where your earlier problem work grows into a document with a stated purpose, a target audience, a proposed solution and what is out of scope. It is one of the documents in the strategy package you finish the six weeks holding, and it is meant to stay alive and keep changing.

Free, six weeks, live, and it is written about your own app.

Join the waitlist to hear when the next free cohort opens, or get the App Strategy Workbook and write yours now.