Dec. 27, 2023
Read time: 3 minutes and 13 seconds.
tags:Many entrepreneurs fall into the trap of thinking, “If I build it, they will come.” I’ve been there, and it’s a painful lesson to learn. This approach is a recipe for disaster and financial pain. Whereas entrepreneurship is really about seeking problems first more than anything.
This attitude is pervasive and damaging. It leads to solutions nobody cares about and a group of people too nice to tell you that something sucks. It is financially destroying entrepreneurs to create solutions that nobody cares for and the tragedy is that this sense of ego and sense of self that is pervasive in entrepreneurship is hurting individuals. If you’ve got a solution and you think no one sees it, it’s likely because others have been crushed pursuing your ambitions more than you seeing something others can’t see. I’ve personally experienced the sting of creating products and integrations that ultimately failed because I didn’t fully understand the problem as thoroughly as I thought.
This attitude puts the solution before the problem and real products solve a problem first and foremost. Ego often gets in the way of real problem-solving. Sometimes, we need to go back to accepting that maybe someone sees something they don’t. There are quite a few factors that have to be considered in case you’re going to actually solve a problem and it’s something others don’t see. It starts with:
It’s sometimes about answering the right questions more than knowing that the solution is “good enough for these people and we just need the engineers to build it now”
A better approach is what’s known as the “Wizard of Oz” strategy. Essentially, you fake it until you make it. Good ol’ Amy Cuddy and showing how you can make something “almost” happen automatically, but it’s really just you pulling the strings. People chase this opportunity to build stuff that doesn’t actually hit the nail on the head. Instead, test out the viability with a manual solution until something can be done to make the automations catch up. More than having a solution is to give the impression of a working solution, even if it’s manual. Test the demand before investing heavily in development and you’ll get the real feedback that will ultimately test your ego (and solution especially) the most.
I’ve used this approach, manually handling processes to simulate a software solution, to validate ideas. It sometimes as simple as having a powerpoint that allows you to create the impression that you have a working product enough to get feedback from the real world.
A solution is a dime a dozen. We often don’t know what solutions we need until we understand the problem. Facebook connected to college students, and Google provided answers.We didn’t know we were seeking answers. We thought we could find that in conversation but as the internet developed we started seeing that maybe just maybe we can find the solutions from someone who shared it online. This helped validate a tool like Google, that was one of many search engines.
A real problem will help drive innovation under any circumstance and it will help us understand the most fitting solution. And if you’re lucky, you will find that the problem can’t be solved. If you’re really really lucky, you found a viable solution to a problem that can POTENTIALLY be profitable. Tons of companies have done this even burning through private money in an effort to grow and prove out a problem and their solution. Uber eats burnt $2 billion dollars in 2022 during the pandemic to earn $1 billion in food sales.
The “build it and they will come” mentality is a dangerous trap for entrepreneurs. Instead of building a product and a solution, hunt for problems.