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I've recently been watching a lot of the Y-Combinator YouTube videos. One idea that comes up a lot is that you should listen to the problems that users have but

I've recently been watching a lot of the Y-Combinator YouTube videos. One idea that comes up a lot is that you should listen to the problems that users have but not their solutions. It's an idea along the line of "If I'd asked what they wanted, they would've said 'A faster horse'." In other words, you would take away "Faster transportation" and discard "Faster horse". I can see how, from the perspective of this article, people who talked to you and listened to what you were saying and then never implemented or tried your suggestions would seem like negligent fools who never listened. The reality might just be that they are trying to do something very different. I get the sense that this article is scorning the VC backed food companies but I don't know why. They are spending their time and money working on hard and valuable problems. Scorning them is easy, since they'll probably fail, but it also strikes me cynical and soulless. Better, in my view, to wish them luck and to realize that a VC backed food tech start up probably will have different hiring patterns and employees than a small food business.

donw 6y ago
Hyunjoo isn't a user. She is a professional, with years of experience in the space that various startups are trying to "disrupt". That's years of hard-won, hands-on experience that would benefit anybody trying to enter the market. Which the average San Francisco startup -- both the founder and employees -- totally ignore, because (a) she's over thirty-five years of age; and (b) she doesn't have a degree from Stanford/Berkeley/Harvard. We see this a lot in Japan when SV startups open shop here.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  There are a variety of food tech startups, some of them would see her as a (potential) user. "User" maybe isn't the best word, but she's definitely the kind of person who has problems that food tech startups would care about solving. If people are ignoring her, they shouldn't be. But neither should they (according to my interpretation of Y-Combinator advice) be following her solutions. If Hyunjoo knew how to solve these problems, they wouldn't be unsolved problems and there would be no startup in solving them. My point was that if people are listening to your problems and not solutions, it may feel like they're ignoring you, even if they aren't.
  - djur 6y ago
    What problems are you talking about that she doesn't know how to solve? Many of these startups seem to be the lack of a solution in search of a problem.
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
      I don't know enough about food tech to say what their problems are. I think, generally, the problem is that food service doesn't scale that well. Food service scales linearly for employees and space and cost. If you could figure out how to scale it better you could feed many more people for less money and solve a huge problem for the world.
      - donw 6y ago
        > I think, generally, the problem is that food service doesn't scale that well. Maybe? First and foremost: my knowledge of the industry is limited to a passing interest. I've investigated opening a restaurant, have worked in precisely one professional kitchen, and worked in front-of-house as well. That said, it depends on what you mean by "food service" and "scale". Fresh ingredients, prepared with great care, served by a professional staff... yeah, that doesn't scale. It takes years to learn to work with "whatever is available in-season", and finding good people is hard in any industry -- waiters at high-end restaurants do not make minimum wage, I assure you. But the price is too high for most people, other than as perhaps a special occasion. The French Laundry isn't about to open up in rural Alaska. Reasonably nutritious food that is both fast and cheap? We have that. Your choice between canned or frozen. American processed food tends to go nuts on the additives, but that isn't a requirement, and I'd say the Europeans overall do a much better job on this front. You get a lot less variety, but more quality. Likely this is an artifact of our history -- preservatives were a godsend before the logistics revolution of WWII made its way into civilian life. American food scientists also went vitamin-crazy early in the 20th century, which combined with the introduction of convenience meals (TV dinners) and fast food, transformed the American culinary landscape into enriched breads, artificially-colored drinks, and "low-fat" snacks (which are horribly unhealthy). China has a similar problem, funnily enough. Communism is all about stamping out the slightest differences between people, so during the cultural revolution, preparing and eating your own food was viewed as "counter-revolutionary", and thus banned. Everybody ate in communal kitchens, and never learned to cook with their parents and grandparents. Killed millennia of culinary history, and is partially why there's so much processed food and so many restaurants in China today. Anyhow, there are restaurant chains here in Japan that literally serve up nothing but reheated frozen food -- Saizeriya is a good example. It's basically the Japanese answer to Olive Garden (which I believe does the same thing!) So, you've got options from fresh and gourmet, all the way down to Chef Boyardee served on a posh plate. What doesn't scale?
munchbunny 6y ago
I've recently been watching a lot of the Y-Combinator YouTube videos. One idea that comes up a lot is that you should listen to the problems that users have but not their solutions. It's an idea along the line of "If I'd asked what they wanted, they would've said 'A faster horse'." In other words, you would take away "Faster transportation" and discard "Faster horse". There's a subtle but important distinction. When you're trying to figure out what to build, and you ask your users, they'll tell you they want a faster horse, but really they want faster transportation. When you're trying to figure out how to build faster transportation, now you've got a very different dilemma: is your daring new idea daring and new because nobody has tried it before due to technological changes, market structures, etc.? Or is it just daring because it's been tried before, and you're about to learn things that experts already knew? There's no easy formula to answering this question.

donw 6y ago

Hyunjoo isn't a user. She is a professional, with years of experience in the space that various startups are trying to "disrupt". That's years of hard-won, hands-on experience that would benefit anybody trying to enter the market. Which the average San Francisco startup -- both the founder and employees -- totally ignore, because (a) she's over thirty-five years of age; and (b) she doesn't have a degree from Stanford/Berkeley/Harvard. We see this a lot in Japan when SV startups open shop here.

ALittleLight 6y ago
There are a variety of food tech startups, some of them would see her as a (potential) user. "User" maybe isn't the best word, but she's definitely the kind of person who has problems that food tech startups would care about solving. If people are ignoring her, they shouldn't be. But neither should they (according to my interpretation of Y-Combinator advice) be following her solutions. If Hyunjoo knew how to solve these problems, they wouldn't be unsolved problems and there would be no startup in solving them. My point was that if people are listening to your problems and not solutions, it may feel like they're ignoring you, even if they aren't.
- djur 6y ago
  What problems are you talking about that she doesn't know how to solve? Many of these startups seem to be the lack of a solution in search of a problem.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    I don't know enough about food tech to say what their problems are. I think, generally, the problem is that food service doesn't scale that well. Food service scales linearly for employees and space and cost. If you could figure out how to scale it better you could feed many more people for less money and solve a huge problem for the world.
    - donw 6y ago
      > I think, generally, the problem is that food service doesn't scale that well. Maybe? First and foremost: my knowledge of the industry is limited to a passing interest. I've investigated opening a restaurant, have worked in precisely one professional kitchen, and worked in front-of-house as well. That said, it depends on what you mean by "food service" and "scale". Fresh ingredients, prepared with great care, served by a professional staff... yeah, that doesn't scale. It takes years to learn to work with "whatever is available in-season", and finding good people is hard in any industry -- waiters at high-end restaurants do not make minimum wage, I assure you. But the price is too high for most people, other than as perhaps a special occasion. The French Laundry isn't about to open up in rural Alaska. Reasonably nutritious food that is both fast and cheap? We have that. Your choice between canned or frozen. American processed food tends to go nuts on the additives, but that isn't a requirement, and I'd say the Europeans overall do a much better job on this front. You get a lot less variety, but more quality. Likely this is an artifact of our history -- preservatives were a godsend before the logistics revolution of WWII made its way into civilian life. American food scientists also went vitamin-crazy early in the 20th century, which combined with the introduction of convenience meals (TV dinners) and fast food, transformed the American culinary landscape into enriched breads, artificially-colored drinks, and "low-fat" snacks (which are horribly unhealthy). China has a similar problem, funnily enough. Communism is all about stamping out the slightest differences between people, so during the cultural revolution, preparing and eating your own food was viewed as "counter-revolutionary", and thus banned. Everybody ate in communal kitchens, and never learned to cook with their parents and grandparents. Killed millennia of culinary history, and is partially why there's so much processed food and so many restaurants in China today. Anyhow, there are restaurant chains here in Japan that literally serve up nothing but reheated frozen food -- Saizeriya is a good example. It's basically the Japanese answer to Olive Garden (which I believe does the same thing!) So, you've got options from fresh and gourmet, all the way down to Chef Boyardee served on a posh plate. What doesn't scale?

munchbunny 6y ago

I've recently been watching a lot of the Y-Combinator YouTube videos. One idea that comes up a lot is that you should listen to the problems that users have but not their solutions. It's an idea along the line of "If I'd asked what they wanted, they would've said 'A faster horse'." In other words, you would take away "Faster transportation" and discard "Faster horse". There's a subtle but important distinction. When you're trying to figure out what to build, and you ask your users, they'll tell you they want a faster horse, but really they want faster transportation. When you're trying to figure out how to build faster transportation, now you've got a very different dilemma: is your daring new idea daring and new because nobody has tried it before due to technological changes, market structures, etc.? Or is it just daring because it's been tried before, and you're about to learn things that experts already knew? There's no easy formula to answering this question.