James Sinclair tells startup founders to nail the problem before building the solution. Ask how big it is, who has it, how they're solving it now, and whether they'd pay. The faster horse anecdote shows one problem can have many solutions, so stay flexible.
Chapters
To clearly differentiate the difference between your problem area and your solution. So many founders start with their solution. This is what my solution does. This is how it's going to do it. This is the features, this is the functions. Ignore that for a second. What is the problem? What is the problem the market is facing? What is the problem you have identified? How big is this problem? Who is having this problem? How are they currently solving this problem? And the reason you have to differentiate it is, is you might be 100% right about your problem. This problem does exist. It is awful. It's everyone hates it. Here's how people are solving it. There's a massive disruption opportunity. It doesn't mean your solution is the right fix to that problem. And that's what most first time entrepreneurs get fixated on. Their solution, how it's going to fix the problem. But what you need to be flexible enough to recognize is there's more than one solution to the problem. And your solution may iterate a number of times as you solve the exact same problem. And I'll give you a phenomenal kind of story that never happened, but it's all over the Internet and they teach it at all these courses and always makes me laugh. Is the problem statement is I want to go faster, I need to get where I'm going quicker. If Henry Ford had asked the people in the horse and buggy, hey, how do we solve this problem? They would have set a faster horse. And that is one scenario. But another scenario is a car another or the invention of the car. Another scenario is a rocket engine. There's a million scenarios to go faster. Better roads, quicker roads, less traffic, more organized traffic, less pedestrians in the road. There's a million different solutions that can solve the exact same problem and you need to separate the two. So I would tell you, as you're going on your journey, really focus on the problem area. What is it? How big is it? Who's encountering it? How are they currently fixing? Are they paying to fix it? What's currently happening? And then how does my solution align to that?
