Yes, but how many people, and is it a problem they would pay to solve? The problem with "us" having problems is that we are, all of us, very atypical. We don'

Yes, but how many people, and is it a problem they would pay to solve? The problem with "us" having problems is that we are, all of us, very atypical. We don't experience "normal people" problems, being comparatively affluent, generally male, technologically proficient, and uniquely able to think in terms of systems, processes, abstractions, and algebraic math. There are also, relatively speaking, very few of us. The number of people with PTO and no idea what to do with it, is not as large as the number of people with PTO who know exactly what to do with it because they have families, which is not as large as the number of people who work hourly with no PTO at all. In addition, we've all had the experience of an ignorant manager, executive, or client thinking they know better because they considered themselves a power user, or because they "used to" do the task we were designing or building a solution for, or because "it's just common sense." Maybe you were able to prove them wrong by walking them through it, or showing them usability tests, or maybe you ended up having to build the feature and watch it fail in the market before something changed. You are never entirely like your user, and you are most different from them by the fact that you can build a solution (getting it for free after your labor is complete), whereas you are asking them to pay you for it (meaning they have to choose to not buy other things). That's why Blank/Ries want you to validate by "getting out of the building" and focus on actually getting paid.