How to find the right problem that is worth working on if I don’t have one?
I've been in a meeting with Michael Sibel (YC CEO) today, organized by the ITMO – University from St. Petersburg.
It was a Q&A session, and I got a chance to ask him a question.
I asked a simple question. How to find the right problem that is worth working on?
He answered me something like:
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Start working on any problem that seems worth working on for you. Ideally, on your problem.
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If you don't have your problem, join someone who does. Just work on something you find interesting.
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Accept the fact that you will constantly fail. There will be more failures than successes.
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If you take those failures as learnings rather than failures, you'll eventually stumble upon the right problem worth working on and build the right solution. It's going to take years.
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The fun and joyful days in a founder's job are rare. Mostly it's monotonous work and constant fails. Keep going.
Michael Sibel has some of the best advice for startup founders period bootstrapped or funded.
I see you have posted a ton about finding an idea. How about a co-founder marketplace for verified founders. The other websites are terrible due to people with just an idea.
Hi, Volkan. Glad to see you again in the comments!
I tried to find co-founders from the internet 3 times and it never worked for me. I just don't believe in strong and long-term relationships between co-founders met on the internet. It should be something personal like friends or former colleagues.
I've been agonizing over this forever. I see two major paths. One path is internal and personal and boils down to deep Self-knowledge, deepest possible: your identity, values, meaning, purpose, what do you care about the most. The other path is external: you are here on this planet among fellow humans and problems abound.
Hey, buddy! What’s your problem fiding process looks like?
I follow both paths depending on mood or circumstances.
The personal path is slow and hard, subtle, intuitive but ultimately true if you do not lie to yourself. Specifically, I read widely all sorts of newsfeeds, comments, forums, listen to podcasts in my areas of interest (bio, medicine, mind, brain, society, culture, ...), and look for trends that are especially interesting, feels "hot", curious on which I dig deeper, map problems, look how people think about problems. Eventually, you will know what to work on.
Thanks for sharing that.
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Hey, man! Thanks for sharing it. Subscribed. Also, I like your Siteoly builder!
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