Startups often get asked what *problem *they solve for their users. While this is a useful gauge to measure the potential, it is also limiting.
Let’s consider why. First of all, what is a problem?
Something that people have difficulty doing.
Say we go back to older days and find examples of problems people had which are solved in the modern day.
- Washing machines solved the problem of physical effort in washing clothes.
- Calculators solved the problem of slow and error-prone calculations.
- Vehicles solved the problem of time and effort it took to go from A to B.
Can we say the same about Youtube or Fitbit or Soylent or Facebook? It’s hard to frame them as: Youtube solved the problem of ___ Fitbit solved the problem of ___
You can deliberately put something in the blanks but it might seem silly. Does that mean they don’t solve a problem then?
This conflict seems to happen because we are constraining ourselves by rigidly sticking to the idea that startups ease difficulty. But difficulty is tricky word that changes meaning with time. It may have been difficult to wash clothes by hand in 1920. It may be difficult to schedule laundry for the machine in 2020.
What if we changed the definition itself? Let’s consider a different definition:
Something that people do but are doing inefficiently.
This seems to be definition for opportunity.
So what’s the gist.
When looking for ideas, it doesn’t help too much to look at problems. They are mostly being served by the market players. And they don’t really offer a glimpse into the future.
Instead, look for opportunities. This has the benefit that you will arrive at a longer list of ideas to pick from. And the side-effect of inventing the future.
Do not however forget to evaluate the size of the opportunity aka market. Here’s one way to do it. There are 3 things in that definition if you look at it:
- Something
- People
- Inefficiency
x = How many people do this something. y = How inefficient is the current way of doing it.
The product xy is a proxy of the market potential.