Fall in love with the problem. 5 characteristics of problems worth solving
Most startups die before finding product-market fit.
One reason for this is that they spend too much time falling in love with solutions instead of problems.
The solutions never click with customers because it isn’t solving a valuable problem or they aren’t solving it in the right way.
Falling in love with technology isn’t limited to startup founders. Meta is going through this right now with the Metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg is more obsessed with the solution (VR, blockchain, etc.) than the problem. What problem exactly does metaverse solve anyways? I don’t think anyone knows.
Product market fit happens when things click with the market. Your solution moves from a nice-to-have to an essential tool they can’t live without.
And once PM-fit happens, growth becomes inevitable. This is what it looked like for me in 2014 when Proposify started to find traction with the market.
The startups that win are in love with the problem they solve, not the technology or solution.
I believe a great problem has the following 5 characteristics:
1) It’s painful
How do you know it’s painful? Well, frankly customers will tell you. You’ll hear it in their voice. There will be nervous laughter.
I didn’t do everything right with Proposify, but I believe something I did do well was stay anchored around the problem of proposals and iterate on solutions until we had built something valuable for the market.
It was clear from the very beginning when I talked to people about what I was working on; The conversations usually went like this:
“My startup helps companies create proposals faster and more easily”
“I write proposals all the time and I HATE it! It’s such a time suck! I would love to test this out for you.”
That clear signal there was a pain worth solving kept us anchored for a long time when our product wasn’t quite there yet.
People don’t get very excited about problems they don’t care about. When you talk to the market you have to resist the temptation to hear what you want to hear.
If they shrug their shoulders, saying ‘yeah it’s kind of annoying’ but they don’t give you strong signals they care then there’s a real danger you’re going to create a vitamin and not a pain killer.
Questions to ask: What does this look like today? Tell me about the last time this happened. Why was it hard?
Listen for tone and body language that indicate this is a massive pain for them.
2) No other solution does it well
Every problem is being solved partially somehow. At the bare minimum, every SaaS company’s primary competitor is Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. If you’re competing in an established product category you’re probably up against more direct competitors.
For a problem to be worth solving, there has to be a market that feels that there’s no great solution already available.
You don’t need to invent a category, you just need a unique approach to solving a problem where people light up and go “I’ve been searching for exactly that but every product I’ve tried can’t do it!”
Questions to ask: What else have you tried to solve this problem? Why didn’t it work? What didn’t you love about other products?
3) It’s recurring
Great problems need to be solved again and again, not just occasionally.
Remember, SaaS is all about subscription revenue. If you can’t solve the problem every day/week/month then why should they pay an annual license?
Problems that show up every now and then may not be worth solving. The reason why established SaaS categories like CRM, invoicing, and help desk are so commonplace is that companies always need to be selling, invoicing, and supporting their customers.
With Proposify, customers who send the occasional proposal don’t need us. But customers who have sales teams sending proposals every week do.
A long time ago when I had a web agency we built software for a client who helped startups raise investment capital with a lean canvas-like tool.
It never really took off, and I believe a big reason came down to the fact that startups raise money every couple of years. Why would they need to buy and learn a software solution they’re going to use for a month and then never come back to?
Questions to ask: How often does this problem happen?
4) It’s urgent or expensive
If you find a problem that’s painful, no one really solves it all that well, and it happens all the time, you’re well on the way.
The last hurdle to get over is really just a matter of whether or not customers can live with the problem or not.
People are notorious for putting up with the status quo. Most would rather live with the pain and not have to change their behaviour than invest the up-front time into learning and adopting new software.
With Proposify we find that companies don’t really shop for proposal software until they have just raised a round of funding or are ramping up growth. They lived with their manual process and document bottlenecks forever, but because they are about to grow the team they know their existing process will be compounded by every new rep they hire.
So eventually they seek a solution, and many still don’t buy!
Great problems are ones where people are keenly aware of how much it’s costing them, or of some kind of critical event happening where they know they’re going to need this solved.
Questions to ask: How much is this problem costing you today? How long can you live with the current status?
Listen for answers like: “It’s not that bad” or “We’re fine with what we have, but it would be nice to be able to do X”. If you’re hearing this then chances are you’ll build some tool they won’t use.
5) It’s ubiquitous
As a final last check, is this problem a one-off or is it somewhat universal?
Building bespoke software for enterprise clients can be a pitfall for this reason - you may be solving a problem with a single buyer in the market.
Great problems are ones where everyone in your market feels this pain. It’s everywhere. If you go to an industry event and ask people about it, they’ll all look at each other knowingly.
The way to find this out is to talk to lots of people, especially within the market you’re considering launching within. If it comes up again and again, you’ve probably hit on something.