5 ms·

Start with a Problem, Not an Idea

82 points by skmurphy 17y ago

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
zealog 17y ago
Absolutely true. Nothing here is ground breaking, but it seems like so many people forget this. My greatest successes have always come from trying to "scratch my own itch." In fact, it's usually something completely out of left field that never seemed like a business that turns out to resonate with others.
h80nm3 17y ago
LOL! another self-professed "startup professional" stating the obvious, common people, most likely, you get the IDEA because you see the PROBLEM. amazing how many people makes a living by stating the obvious.
s3graham 17y ago
This is part of the perverse reason I can't get behind the advice to start a startup immediately after university. Suffering at a large company for a while isn't self-flagellation, it hands you hundreds of things needing solutions.
- wlievens 17y ago
  I'm not sure if working at a large company is the most efficient way to get inspired.
  - hachiya 17y ago
    Perhaps not the work alone, but the networking a standard job provides can give valuable insights into marketable ideas, through discussions on the job or at lunch.
  - krschultz 17y ago
    It's not getting "inspired", its finding all the problems they have and are incapable of fixing due to bureaucracy, then stepping out of the place and coming back with a product that solves the problem. It is often easier to get money out of big companies than change.
- drawkbox 17y ago
  There might be something to this. Work at a big company or any company really in an industry to find the anti-patterns or problems that you never knew. I have worked on systems for Healthcare communication, strategic marketing, online promotions and game development. Almost everything I am working now it based on problems or immense walls built up at companies in those industries that I wouldn't have had the insight to understand had I not taken the apprenticeship through anti-patterns via horrible political walled situations at other companies first. Also, every company has good patterns and anti-patterns that can be applied and work in many other situations. Maybe something can come from all the pain.
  - edw519 17y ago
    "There might be something to this." There is something to this. I have accumulated enough business problems to stay busy for 3 lifetimes. The only issue is "What's most important?" To anyone searching for startup ideas, get a job. You won't be searching for long.
- vidarh 17y ago
  True. On the other hand the longer you wait the more likely you are of having established a high cost of living for yourself and other limiting factors. Example: I have a mortgage, a wife who is studying and a 6 week old baby. Today I need to bring in at least 2500 GBP after tax per month for us to break even or set aside sufficient savings first to make up for the shortfall; when I started my first company I had no dependents, no commitments of any kind, shared a flat with my co-founders that we rented for about 1000 GBP/month, and beyond that we paid ourselves 600GBP/month each. There were four of us, so in effect we were each living on 850 GBP/month after tax while getting things off the ground. In other words the threshold for me to start a company now is much higher than it was, and that is excluding the "luxuries" that drives the income I expect to have even higher. Then I could jump at anything exciting; now I won't consider something unless I think it has a reasonable shot at making me a solid salary and with a shot at making it big. Doesn't mean I'm not still working on various ideas, but it takes more before I can afford to take the risk of going it full time and I need to choose more carefully. If you have a good idea, right after (or before - I quit after a year, but since went back and got a degree) university is a good time to throw yourself into it. You're likely used to living on little money. If you make it big, it doesn't matter, and if you don't you get plenty of chances to have a go at the grind of a larger company later while contemplating your next move.
patio11 17y ago
Take a luxury and make it a commodity. It works the other way, too. Water is a commodity -- a commodity which is, essentially, free at the margin -- that is also a multi-billion dollar business in the US. Much the same could be said about food. (I am about to step on some toes. Turn away if you're easily offended.) There are entire industries which are designed around the proposition "You are too good to consume X. Poor people consume X. You should instead be consuming X Prime. You can tell it is better than X, because it costs five times as much." A separate but related issue: consumption of status goods among poor people. In terms of selling B2B services, I am often amused by re-luxurization of commoditized services: taking something which was once customized and extraordinarily expensive but then made into cheap-and-infinite-scale and then competing with the cheap-and-infinite with something that is a cut above but which still scales. Data centers circa 1996: luxury service. Web hosting: commodity service. Slicehost: not a commodity service, but the marginal cost to the firm is still close to zero. Personalized financial advice: luxury service. Your bank's website and free checking: commodity service. Mint: personalized financial advice, but at scale. Graphic design: luxury service. Stock icons: commodity service. 99designs: commodity-priced luxury service that scales.
- tomjen 17y ago
  People often come up with water as an example, but it fails on many levels: In many cities the "native" water is full of chlorine If you travel to a foreign country, you may not be able to drink the native water at all If you are not at home, getting water may not be possible unless you by it in bottles. Bottles enable you to carry around water, which is useful for car trips, etc.
  - wlievens 17y ago
    For home use, one would use a filter can, at a fraction of the price of bottled water.
  - patio11 17y ago
    On the contrary, if smart people can be convinced to ignore the practically inexhaustible and freely available supply of water in every building in most first world countries, then I think the de-commoditization of water was an astounding success. (I mention this because it is intellectually interesting to me, not because I hold contempt in my heart for people who buy bottled water, by the way.) Incidentally: HN doesn't support unordered lists very well, particularly if you like starting them with asterixes. The best alternative I have for you is starting them with + signs and putting two linebreaks between points.
seejay 17y ago
Couldn't agree more! Kevin Rose's Problem was, not being able to get news to the SlashDot home page. And we all know how successful the solution he came up with.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
jyothi 17y ago
The title itself is a ton of advice. So simple and so profound. I think 'start with a problem' - creates a clear definition of success (solve the problem), demands focus and makes everything so simple to figure out.
ptenjoy 17y ago
I agree with everything else you just said. Maybe we are not so far apart in our doctrinal views…Peace and Grace to you http://www.ed-hardy.cc/ http://www.ed-hardy.cc/ ed hardy http://www.ed-hardy.cc/ed-hardy-clothing.html http://www.ed-hardy.cc/ed-hardy-clothing.html ed hardy clothing
knuton 17y ago
I agree. Consider twitter on the other hand. I would argue that while it may have been introduced to solve a certain “problem” (communication hub for friends/local groups, “I want to have a dispatch service that connects us on our phones using text.”), its success comes from accidentally satisfying different needs.
davidw 17y ago
Good post, but I dislike the "ideas are worthless because there is no market for them" idea: http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/04/26/ideas-are-worthless http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/04/26/ideas-are-worthless
eterno 17y ago
Couldnt DISAGREE more. The advice is extremely banal bordering on common sense but most importantly discounts the fact that a lot of startups are built not to solve any existing problem but perhaps to just better an existing solution. The semantics are crucial here, because solving a problem almost implies that it is something a customer 'understands' to be a problem and not just satisfed with the status quo - that is true for almost everything - give me a better house, car, laptop, email, search etc. etc. anyday and if its really good enough I will switch. The biggest startups were not found by scratching an 'itch' but through founders idiosyncratic views of the status quo and how they belived (without an MBA, without a customer survey and without figuring out if it was really an 'itch') on what was a better way, and for a long time without any external validation. Selling books online - how does that even make sense, the internet was supposed to get rid of books but Amazon found a way. The iPod - if no one even knew something like this can be built, how can it possibly be a part of their 'itch'. Twitter - I bet there was no itch here too.
- iends 17y ago
  Your last little blurb is off the mark: Mp3 players existed long before the iPod, but they had poor usability and no centralized store to legally purchase music. Bookstores existed long before amazon, but their inventory was limited. Blogging existed long before twitter, but it was a bit overkill to use existing solutions for micro-blogging.
  - ahoyhere 17y ago
    Yes, but everyone was happy with the status quo of MP3 players at the time. Nobody wanted the iPod. Everybody said it would fail. And certainly no one was asking for a centralized music store. Pfff! I don't really agree with OC on other points, but the iPod really didn't scratch an itch. It changed the game by creating something new, not something that "solved a problem." To say the iPod solved a problem is pure hindsight.
    - gnaritas 17y ago
      > Yes, but everyone was happy with the status quo of MP3 players at the time No they weren't, most people couldn't figure them out. > To say the iPod solved a problem is pure hindsight. No it isn't, the iPod brought it to the masses by making it simple enough for everyone to use.
maurycy 17y ago
What is the problem behind Twitter, by the way?
- didip 17y ago
  Your question brings up my age old question. Communication on the internet has been solved multiple times, again-and-again, since IRC/mailing list (That's as far back as I can remember). Then, why there's still room to grow for IM, Meebo, and now Twitter?
ruibal 17y ago
http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html. Similar, no?
pchristensen 17y ago
Somebody has been plagiarizing pg: http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html OP: "Fix something that’s broken. In business, it seems to me that the traditional banking business models are broken or at least no longer fit the purpose. On the other end of the spectrum, Internet dating sites don’t seem to work. They have millions of users, so they must be promising something people want. And yet they work horribly. Just ask anyone who uses them." to pg: "One way to make something people want is to look at stuff people use now that's broken. Dating sites are a prime example. They have millions of users, so they must be promising something people want. And yet they work horribly. Just ask anyone who uses them. " Or "Take a luxury and make it a commodity. People must want something if they pay a lot for it. It is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically cheaper if you try. When you make something dramatically cheaper, you sell more, and people start to use it in different ways. For example, once cell phones were so cheap that most people had one, people started using them as cameras and Internet devices." to pg's : "Another classic way to make something people want is to take a luxury and make it into a commmodity. People must want something if they pay a lot for it. And it is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically cheaper if you try. This was Henry Ford's plan. He made cars, which had been a luxury item, into a commodity. But the idea is much older than Henry Ford."
- skmurphy 17y ago
  Good catch: I took a hard look and have to agree that the number and phrasing of the exact matches seem to be well above the level of coincidence. I posted this on the site, curious as to what the reply will be. --- I posted a pointer to this on http://news.ycombinator.com/ http://news.ycombinator.com/ at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661440 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661440 and this reply http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661875 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661875 pointed out exact matches for six sentences in an October 2005 essay by Paul Graham at http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html here are the matches: [dating sites] They have millions of users, so they must be promising something people want. And yet they work horribly. Just ask anyone who uses them. [T]ake a luxury and make it into a commmodity. People must want something if they pay a lot for it. And it is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically cheaper if you try. Were you influenced by Graham's essay? The number and length of exact matches seem well above the level of coincidence.
Ammar 17y ago
Not always true, for example twitter didn't solve a new problem. People could communicate before just fine; it just provided another method to stay connected.
debt 17y ago
Why even post a link to the blog? Why not just the headline? I get the gist. I don't really need an entire anecdotal blog post to loosely explain a piece of advice.
run4yourlives 17y ago
The counter of course is the Blue Ocean Strategy, in which the product solves a problem that people didn't know they had. Given the innovation of the web, Blue Ocean is just as viable than these other four methods. There are several ways to implement a winning business, talking points tend to forget that.
known 17y ago
What is the Problem? Who is the Customer? Who is the Competitor? What is the Revenue Model? A case study http://xml.gov/documents/completed/bah/registryBusinessCase.htm http://xml.gov/documents/completed/bah/registryBusinessCase....

82 points by skmurphy 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

Absolutely true. Nothing here is ground breaking, but it seems like so many people forget this. My greatest successes have always come from trying to "scratch my own itch." In fact, it's usually something completely out of left field that never seemed like a business that turns out to resonate with others.

h80nm3 17y ago

LOL! another self-professed "startup professional" stating the obvious, common people, most likely, you get the IDEA because you see the PROBLEM. amazing how many people makes a living by stating the obvious.

s3graham 17y ago

This is part of the perverse reason I can't get behind the advice to start a startup immediately after university. Suffering at a large company for a while isn't self-flagellation, it hands you hundreds of things needing solutions.

wlievens 17y ago
I'm not sure if working at a large company is the most efficient way to get inspired.
- hachiya 17y ago
  Perhaps not the work alone, but the networking a standard job provides can give valuable insights into marketable ideas, through discussions on the job or at lunch.
- krschultz 17y ago
  It's not getting "inspired", its finding all the problems they have and are incapable of fixing due to bureaucracy, then stepping out of the place and coming back with a product that solves the problem. It is often easier to get money out of big companies than change.
drawkbox 17y ago
There might be something to this. Work at a big company or any company really in an industry to find the anti-patterns or problems that you never knew. I have worked on systems for Healthcare communication, strategic marketing, online promotions and game development. Almost everything I am working now it based on problems or immense walls built up at companies in those industries that I wouldn't have had the insight to understand had I not taken the apprenticeship through anti-patterns via horrible political walled situations at other companies first. Also, every company has good patterns and anti-patterns that can be applied and work in many other situations. Maybe something can come from all the pain.
- edw519 17y ago
  "There might be something to this." There is something to this. I have accumulated enough business problems to stay busy for 3 lifetimes. The only issue is "What's most important?" To anyone searching for startup ideas, get a job. You won't be searching for long.
vidarh 17y ago
True. On the other hand the longer you wait the more likely you are of having established a high cost of living for yourself and other limiting factors. Example: I have a mortgage, a wife who is studying and a 6 week old baby. Today I need to bring in at least 2500 GBP after tax per month for us to break even or set aside sufficient savings first to make up for the shortfall; when I started my first company I had no dependents, no commitments of any kind, shared a flat with my co-founders that we rented for about 1000 GBP/month, and beyond that we paid ourselves 600GBP/month each. There were four of us, so in effect we were each living on 850 GBP/month after tax while getting things off the ground. In other words the threshold for me to start a company now is much higher than it was, and that is excluding the "luxuries" that drives the income I expect to have even higher. Then I could jump at anything exciting; now I won't consider something unless I think it has a reasonable shot at making me a solid salary and with a shot at making it big. Doesn't mean I'm not still working on various ideas, but it takes more before I can afford to take the risk of going it full time and I need to choose more carefully. If you have a good idea, right after (or before - I quit after a year, but since went back and got a degree) university is a good time to throw yourself into it. You're likely used to living on little money. If you make it big, it doesn't matter, and if you don't you get plenty of chances to have a go at the grind of a larger company later while contemplating your next move.

patio11 17y ago

Take a luxury and make it a commodity. It works the other way, too. Water is a commodity -- a commodity which is, essentially, free at the margin -- that is also a multi-billion dollar business in the US. Much the same could be said about food. (I am about to step on some toes. Turn away if you're easily offended.) There are entire industries which are designed around the proposition "You are too good to consume X. Poor people consume X. You should instead be consuming X Prime. You can tell it is better than X, because it costs five times as much." A separate but related issue: consumption of status goods among poor people. In terms of selling B2B services, I am often amused by re-luxurization of commoditized services: taking something which was once customized and extraordinarily expensive but then made into cheap-and-infinite-scale and then competing with the cheap-and-infinite with something that is a cut above but which still scales. Data centers circa 1996: luxury service. Web hosting: commodity service. Slicehost: not a commodity service, but the marginal cost to the firm is still close to zero. Personalized financial advice: luxury service. Your bank's website and free checking: commodity service. Mint: personalized financial advice, but at scale. Graphic design: luxury service. Stock icons: commodity service. 99designs: commodity-priced luxury service that scales.

tomjen 17y ago
People often come up with water as an example, but it fails on many levels: In many cities the "native" water is full of chlorine If you travel to a foreign country, you may not be able to drink the native water at all If you are not at home, getting water may not be possible unless you by it in bottles. Bottles enable you to carry around water, which is useful for car trips, etc.
- wlievens 17y ago
  For home use, one would use a filter can, at a fraction of the price of bottled water.
- patio11 17y ago
  On the contrary, if smart people can be convinced to ignore the practically inexhaustible and freely available supply of water in every building in most first world countries, then I think the de-commoditization of water was an astounding success. (I mention this because it is intellectually interesting to me, not because I hold contempt in my heart for people who buy bottled water, by the way.) Incidentally: HN doesn't support unordered lists very well, particularly if you like starting them with asterixes. The best alternative I have for you is starting them with + signs and putting two linebreaks between points.

seejay 17y ago

Couldn't agree more! Kevin Rose's Problem was, not being able to get news to the SlashDot home page. And we all know how successful the solution he came up with.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

jyothi 17y ago

The title itself is a ton of advice. So simple and so profound. I think 'start with a problem' - creates a clear definition of success (solve the problem), demands focus and makes everything so simple to figure out.

ptenjoy 17y ago

I agree with everything else you just said. Maybe we are not so far apart in our doctrinal views…Peace and Grace to you http://www.ed-hardy.cc/ http://www.ed-hardy.cc/ ed hardy http://www.ed-hardy.cc/ed-hardy-clothing.html http://www.ed-hardy.cc/ed-hardy-clothing.html ed hardy clothing

knuton 17y ago

I agree. Consider twitter on the other hand. I would argue that while it may have been introduced to solve a certain “problem” (communication hub for friends/local groups, “I want to have a dispatch service that connects us on our phones using text.”), its success comes from accidentally satisfying different needs.

davidw 17y ago

Good post, but I dislike the "ideas are worthless because there is no market for them" idea: http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/04/26/ideas-are-worthless http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/04/26/ideas-are-worthless

eterno 17y ago

Couldnt DISAGREE more. The advice is extremely banal bordering on common sense but most importantly discounts the fact that a lot of startups are built not to solve any existing problem but perhaps to just better an existing solution. The semantics are crucial here, because solving a problem almost implies that it is something a customer 'understands' to be a problem and not just satisfed with the status quo - that is true for almost everything - give me a better house, car, laptop, email, search etc. etc. anyday and if its really good enough I will switch. The biggest startups were not found by scratching an 'itch' but through founders idiosyncratic views of the status quo and how they belived (without an MBA, without a customer survey and without figuring out if it was really an 'itch') on what was a better way, and for a long time without any external validation. Selling books online - how does that even make sense, the internet was supposed to get rid of books but Amazon found a way. The iPod - if no one even knew something like this can be built, how can it possibly be a part of their 'itch'. Twitter - I bet there was no itch here too.

iends 17y ago
Your last little blurb is off the mark: Mp3 players existed long before the iPod, but they had poor usability and no centralized store to legally purchase music. Bookstores existed long before amazon, but their inventory was limited. Blogging existed long before twitter, but it was a bit overkill to use existing solutions for micro-blogging.
- ahoyhere 17y ago
  Yes, but everyone was happy with the status quo of MP3 players at the time. Nobody wanted the iPod. Everybody said it would fail. And certainly no one was asking for a centralized music store. Pfff! I don't really agree with OC on other points, but the iPod really didn't scratch an itch. It changed the game by creating something new, not something that "solved a problem." To say the iPod solved a problem is pure hindsight.
  - gnaritas 17y ago
    > Yes, but everyone was happy with the status quo of MP3 players at the time No they weren't, most people couldn't figure them out. > To say the iPod solved a problem is pure hindsight. No it isn't, the iPod brought it to the masses by making it simple enough for everyone to use.

maurycy 17y ago

What is the problem behind Twitter, by the way?

didip 17y ago
Your question brings up my age old question. Communication on the internet has been solved multiple times, again-and-again, since IRC/mailing list (That's as far back as I can remember). Then, why there's still room to grow for IM, Meebo, and now Twitter?

ruibal 17y ago

http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html. Similar, no?

pchristensen 17y ago

Somebody has been plagiarizing pg: http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html OP: "Fix something that’s broken. In business, it seems to me that the traditional banking business models are broken or at least no longer fit the purpose. On the other end of the spectrum, Internet dating sites don’t seem to work. They have millions of users, so they must be promising something people want. And yet they work horribly. Just ask anyone who uses them." to pg: "One way to make something people want is to look at stuff people use now that's broken. Dating sites are a prime example. They have millions of users, so they must be promising something people want. And yet they work horribly. Just ask anyone who uses them. " Or "Take a luxury and make it a commodity. People must want something if they pay a lot for it. It is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically cheaper if you try. When you make something dramatically cheaper, you sell more, and people start to use it in different ways. For example, once cell phones were so cheap that most people had one, people started using them as cameras and Internet devices." to pg's : "Another classic way to make something people want is to take a luxury and make it into a commmodity. People must want something if they pay a lot for it. And it is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically cheaper if you try. This was Henry Ford's plan. He made cars, which had been a luxury item, into a commodity. But the idea is much older than Henry Ford."

skmurphy 17y ago
Good catch: I took a hard look and have to agree that the number and phrasing of the exact matches seem to be well above the level of coincidence. I posted this on the site, curious as to what the reply will be. --- I posted a pointer to this on http://news.ycombinator.com/ http://news.ycombinator.com/ at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661440 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661440 and this reply http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661875 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661875 pointed out exact matches for six sentences in an October 2005 essay by Paul Graham at http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html here are the matches: [dating sites] They have millions of users, so they must be promising something people want. And yet they work horribly. Just ask anyone who uses them. [T]ake a luxury and make it into a commmodity. People must want something if they pay a lot for it. And it is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically cheaper if you try. Were you influenced by Graham's essay? The number and length of exact matches seem well above the level of coincidence.

Ammar 17y ago

Not always true, for example twitter didn't solve a new problem. People could communicate before just fine; it just provided another method to stay connected.

debt 17y ago

Why even post a link to the blog? Why not just the headline? I get the gist. I don't really need an entire anecdotal blog post to loosely explain a piece of advice.

run4yourlives 17y ago

The counter of course is the Blue Ocean Strategy, in which the product solves a problem that people didn't know they had. Given the innovation of the web, Blue Ocean is just as viable than these other four methods. There are several ways to implement a winning business, talking points tend to forget that.

known 17y ago

What is the Problem? Who is the Customer? Who is the Competitor? What is the Revenue Model? A case study http://xml.gov/documents/completed/bah/registryBusinessCase.htm http://xml.gov/documents/completed/bah/registryBusinessCase....