Some unique ways to find problems to solve?

Hey Joseph,

The startup community has overcomplicated the process of finding problems to solve.

It's as simple as finding problems that other businesses are already solving and putting your own spin on the solution.

Best

Chris

Ask your friends, family, coworkers, or even strangers about the biggest problems they face. You may be surprised at the variety of responses you get and could find inspiration for a new product or service.

(a) I liked these two article a lot. I'd suggest you to read it as well: https://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html and http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html. These posts will give you a new "mindset" on how to think about getting new ideas.

(b) I came across an interesting framework on Reddit. I don't have the link to the exact Reddit post, but I've taken screenshot. Here's the link: https://imgur.com/a/VNwr0Jp

Pay attention to social media. Look for common complaints or questions on social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, or Facebook groups.

Pay attention to the tasks you do each day and identify areas where you can improve efficiency or reduce waste.

I use the following techniques on Reddit and Twitter

Reddit
"Problem keyword" + reddit
Search the above keyword on google-> search results-> open the link and you will find the problems

Twitter
You can search according to the hash tags you will find multiple problems and you can pick up one and solve it

I usually prefer reddit because you get more context over there

Or you can follow up in the forums, I am interested in solving the problems in Digital marketing, so I continuously follow up forums like blackhatworld(it is a online community site for digital marketing) where they share the SEO problems faced by masses and then I pick the problem statement and create solution for that

I have exactly built Micro SaaS HQ for the same thing. It comes with Micro SaaS opportunities, trends and with a closed community. It will be a very good starting point.

1. Audience

Start by getting a clear understanding of how the audience is you seek to serve.

Everything starts with the audience.

A simple technique is to choose an audience that you're already a part of. For me that could be entrepreneurial scientists, marketing strategists, chief marketing officers, or solopreneurs.

Then you can narrow it down by choosing a subset:

• Aspiring: people that wanna get into the field
• Rookies: people that are doing it but have less than 6 months experience
• Experts: people that have expertise but miss a certain bit of knowledge.

This makes it straightforward to get a nicely defined niche. If you don't niche down, you'll attract everyone. Imagine giving a lecture on mathematics but the audience is high school students as well as PhD students.

It's bound to suck for everyone. It'll be too hard or too simple.

Marketing academics advice against niching for reasons I won't get into right now, but after doing my own research and having been in this space for a decade, I'm confident that they're wrong.

2. Clubhouses

When you've chosen an audience to serve, the next step is to figure out where they live online.

You put on your detective hat and go look.

This matters for two reasons.

i. Social Desirability Bias. To quote House: "Everybody lies." Sometimes intentional and sometimes unintentional. But people want to show their best selves to others and themselves. So when you get data from surveys, they're often highly skewed. When you get datapoints from anonymous forums e.g. the likelihood the info is correct grows.

ii. Time. Getting in front of people IRL is very time consuming. Studying people online takes up a fraction of the time and the data you get is almost just as good.

3. Diagnosis

Once you've figured out what the clubhouses are, you act like a doctor and try to diagnose the clubhouse.

THIS stage is where the "problems" should come from. Highly relevant (because these are problems YOUR chosen audience has) and highly correct (because you didn't dream these up in your office... you got proof!)

What to look for?
• Cries for help
• Proof of buying behavior
• Willingness to pay

A cry for help is exactly what it sounds like.

What are people complaining about?

Look for things like: "Ah! I fucking hate X" or "Ugh... Y is driving me crazyyyy" or "Does anyone else struggle with Z"

Proof of buying behavior means you want proof that people are spending money. Avoid cheapskates as customers AT ALL COST! One of the easiest ways to improve your business without doing any hard work like positioning, price architecture, or copywriting, is to simply get better customers.

Willingness to pay or WTP refers to the max. amount of money a consumer is willing to pay for a product or service.

You'll need to know WTP so you have something to go off of when you launch your own product.

The combination of all these things reduce your risk profile and maximize the likelihood that you're making something PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT TO BUY.

YC always says: "make something people want". But I always tell my students: "Find something people have already SHOWN that they want".

My entire methodology centers around extreme risk reduction and a good technique for that is good ol' fashioned qualitative market research and digital ethnography.

I hope this answers your question or at least points you in the right direction.

There are a few more steps that I cover in my Research-First methodology but they're outside of the scope of your question so instead, I'll just include this link:

https://younglingresearch.substack.com/p/farming

If you read this as well as the essay linked in the Reference, you should have a decent amount of info to think about problems and solutions more strategically and less haphazardly.

Lastly, I also have a video course that covers this methodology in great detail which you can check out here, budget allowing.

In general I would say the approach (or at least the way I see it) is to get really good at something (for us programmers, it is programming). That is our tool of execution.

But to create value you need to apply it to something, and identify in what way you can use your tool to create value. It does mean you need to immerse yourself in another domain. If it is a domain you are somewhat interested in, it becomes easier.

The goal is to create an overlap big enough between your problem-solving skills and your knowledge of another domain. In this overlap - that is where you find the opportunities.

A few years ago I wrote an article about how to work with this approach, here is a non-pay-walled link: https://medium.com/swlh/how-programmers-find-their-startup-ideas-980a92fcd640?sk=40cd0facb08dfb42926aed3ad9bdfe5f

I frequently use reddit to source potential problems. Subreddits for niche markets can be a great way to gain insight to what kind of issues people in that industry is facing.

I think the best way to discover problems and opportunities is simply by getting beers with people and talking to them about their lives. There are guaranteed to be some complains mentioned in the conversation - and from that point its just pick, choose & innovate

The most straightforward problems to solve are ones you've personally faced, so I would start by thinking about things you have found annoying or difficult. Maybe it's something you do at work when working on your projects or something someone close to you has complained about. Of course, you can always start by asking the people around you. You would be surprised by how much insight you can get from your immediate network.

I don't think it's as quick but this MicroConf video talks about "farming" ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hU0weGo_6U

Basically:

1. Chose a generic pain point in a niche you have access to.
2. Try googling "X sucks, I Hate X, Why does X...", use a keyword suggestion tool on the previously mentioned google queries, join online communities, and/or ask people about their pain point and write down every single finer pain point that come up. They can be used as content ideas OR product ideas so don't throw any out.
3. Chose one of the fine points from step 2 and do research/produce some content on the matter and publish it where that audience is as your cost to get in front of eyeballs and ask for feedback on the idea that begins to emerge.

Implement solutions that exist in new fields. worked for me personally

You can take something that exists and see how you can make it better.
I thought it would be nice to make an online version for screamingfrog and I started doing it :) https://panel.issuedetector.com/

The best way to find a problem is to research on the problems you face in your daily life

If it doesn't need to become huge, I would focus on something I already know, something that people I know would use. You'll get the satisfaction of having users and you can always see if you can grow bigger later.

Get a job. No, really. If you already have one, take a look around. Companies that you work for, people that you work with, they all have problems, repeatable tasks, broken tools or processes.

That's how I found mine. I have my own itch to scratch now.

Have you considered jumping in as a co-founder with someone who is in the early stage of building a solution to a problem they already found?

Like me.....

life is full of problems, just look around what you do, the communities you are in etc...

I use a lot of tools to get different results (I'm in LatAm, so maybe some tools aren't useful outside the continent).

• Fb Groups and search for questions (quick tip: use
  "<your_niche_keyword>" "public group" site:facebook.com"
  to get quickly available groups related to your market)
• Google Maps reviews (other companies weaknesses are your potential strengths if you know how to solve it)
• Tourism-related apps or solutions: TripAdvisor and AirBnb reviews
• Physical products: marketplace reviews on sites like MercadoLibre, Amazon, etc.