Replace the word "Idea" with "Solution"
I've been thinking about the topic of coming up with "ideas" a lot and after my morning walk today I think I have some clarity.
I think we should replace the word "idea" with "solution" in our daily thinking. An idea can be anything. Tinder for dogs, Facebook for cat owners, Airbnb for gyms... The problem with ideas is that they need to be validated to know if they're even something that someone would pay for, and the only way to do that is to investigate whether people have a problem that you're trying to solve with that idea.
Coming up with ideas is like having a hammer and looking for a nail. You're coming up with something that you'd like to make and then trying to find people that need it.
In contrast, the word solution implies that there is a problem to begin with. This causes us to think about the problem from a different perspective. Instead of trying to think of things that people might need, we go actively seek problems that people already have. Once we know what people are struggling with, that piece of information can be used to come up with a number of different solutions.
For example, if someone says "I have a hard time scheduling appointments for my clients", there are a number of different ways that you could approach solving that problem. Not only that, you know that there are people out there with that problem. If you can find a problem out there that a lot of people have then you already have potential buyers.
After writing down 100+ ideas this week, I'm no closer to having something that I'm willing to spend countless hours on because I would need to research whether they're viable individually to know if they're worth making. I will be spending more time on Reddit and other places where people frequently complain about their problems to see if this gets me better results.
Right on. Ideas are a terrible place to start. Ideas are things you should be having after you've discovered a problem. It's totally backwards to try to come up with ideas and find problems that match.
One of the things I like to do to exercise my solution brain muscle is look around at existing products and ask myself what problem they are solving. For example, just looking around my desk right now I see a glass, headphones, a pencil, books, a tape measure, a peg, a piece of paper folded into a plane and so on... each of these things is a solution to an existing problem. Each of these solutions was created by somebody at some point that had that exact problem.
The next thing to realise is that it's okay to have more than one solution to the same problem. Heck, the solution doesn't even have to be very different. I have 3 pencils on my desk made by 3 different companies and I bought all of them.
Think about that for a second. The only perceptible difference between these 3 pencils on my desk is that they where created by 3 different companies. All 3 of these companies are solving essentially the same problem in the same way and they co-exist together selling their products.
Couldn't have said it better myself, Dylan. Competition means that the problem that they're solving does exist otherwise they wouldn't be in business.
Taking that approach has helped me too. Looking at products that I think are interesting and then thinking on a deeper level about their audience and their needs is a good way to solve this problem too.
Great to see this approach. I've built Probstack for the same reason as it was difficult to find the problems that are worth solving. There were 100's of problems I think were good before I started this but I couldn't pick the ones that were actually worth solving..
https://www.probstack.io - A community to inspire makers and help find problems that are worth solving!
Would love to know your feedback on this..Thanks
fyi We're intereviewing more and more users now and gathering problems that are worth looking into..
This is a cool idea! I've been wondering if something like this existed. I'll check it out in more depth later.
Hey thanks so much! Sure, please do check out and let me know your feedback. I'm also on [email protected] Talk soon!
Hi SaiVas, just a couple of nitpicks from me:
The emoji faces that represent the amount of upvotes something got don't feel like they correspond to a growing number. It took me a while to see that they're ordered by the amount of upvotes. Maybe give a visual scale that shows the progression of emojis, or remove them altogether?
The categories are filtering the issues, but they're on the right hand side. It feels like it would fit better at the top of the list.
Changing the sorting from Top to Latest does a page reload, doesn't look very nice :)
Hey, thanks so much for this valuable feedback. These are actually being fixed now as we talk :) I should have these live very soon. Thanks for checking again. This helps!
Great post!
Loving every word of it!
Well said Brandon! 👏
I would suggest you to further replace the word "solution" to "inefficiency"
"What inefficiency are you going after ?"
This will allow you to be broad enough as well as narrow down whenever required.
This is end output agnostic. Even a simple article can solve a inefficiency.
This also allow you to understand how people address it and how big is the market
It also help you to think why and how that inefficiency is being created. What is the ideally expected outcome.
When you think of inefficiency, you may end up building multiple products that suits different environment.
Yep, great shout Brandon. Customer segment / problem is the foundation of practically every business, and we often skip over it by going straight to 'solution'.
If it helps, me and my co-founder keep a list of 'Problems worth solving' (or rather, problems that might be worth solving). Once we have the idea/solution, we stop, and write down what problem we think it exists to solve. We don't write anything down about how to solve it, because that leaves it free for some ideation.
(Saying that, we skipped straight to 'solution' for our current product - https://inqu.is/ - even though it's designed to validate whether a problem exists....!)
When I have ideas I still write them down. Perhaps this random ideas will come in handy one day.
I have noticed, though, that since I've been pursuing the 1 thing that I want to do, I'm finding inefficiencies in that might be better suited to build at a later time than most things on the list that I have come up with.
A lot of people talk about "scratching your own itch" but that's really hard to do if nothing itches. I always seem to get those itches when I'm heads down in a project.
Cool site. I'm sure there are more than one way to find something worth solving - if you provide value to your users then I'm sure it'll do great. You seem to be attempting to solve a problem that a lot of people struggle with.
Totally, until a better word comes along. ;)
I think this is the best approach to take, or else you'll just end up creating something that people don't care much for.
Hi Brandon, great post. I recently came to the realisation that ideas come easy but finding users for ideas is a more harder. I believe it can be done by some but not everybody...
I would like to ask you a follow up question. If looking for a problem is a better approach, where do you go to find those problems? Where do you find people with problems worth solving?
Difficult one that. Ideas for problems either come about because:
I daresay #1 and #2 are the overwhelming reasons why most businesses exist. #3 is possible, but that type of research takes and, and is pretty skilled.
If you don't have any ideas yourself at the moment, might be an idea to explore teaming up with people.
I agree with this comment. I'd add that #3 can be problematic in that if you don't have personal or industry experience, it becomes very difficult to craft the solution or even care about the solution in the long run.
On an added note, you can train yourself to be "on the lookout" for problems. For example, I use a lot of different types of software/apps and I take notes anytime I run into a problem, annoyance, issue or limitation. When enough frustrations start piling up, I look for better software. If I can't find better software then I start to think maybe there's an opportunity there.
The downside to this approach is you start seeing problems everywhere which can sometimes be a frustrating way to live. It's like once you learn typography, you start noticing bad typography everywhere and you can't unsee it.
"Discontent is the first necessity of progress."
The upside though is you'll never be short of business ideas.
#3 can be done too, but I personally haven't found a problem using that method that I've felt is wholeheartedly worth spending a ton of time on.
You might want to to take a look at this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exMoRoaxKtQ, it's a talk that @amyhoy did back in 2013 that I found really helpful.
For my first company I found the problem doing freelance.
For my current company I found that while working on the first :)
Would be really helpful to know your feedback on https://www.probstack.io/ as I'm building this for makers who are in search of problems that are worth solving. I'm also on [email protected] Thanks