Want to Build a Billion-Dollar Company?
Solve One of These 3 Big Problems
I recently pitched a startup idea to a very smart investor friend. “Meh,” he said. “I don’t know. You’re not solving a big enough problem.”
It was frustrating feedback, mostly because many successful tech companies didn’t seem to solve a huge problem when they started.
How vitally important was it for Harvard to have a facebook? Were we all dying without a next-level search algorithm for the web? Were teams of people not working together successfully before we had a dedicated messaging app?
I’m a marketing nerd, as you can see from my work with Halfshark Industries, so I decided to see if I could uncover anything by researching explicit and implicit mission statements among Silicon Valley’s unicorns, decacorns, and legendary-tier companies.
Is “solve a big problem” just a valley platitude? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, it is a linguistic cop-out: a way to say “I don’t get it” while still sounding smart.
On the other hand, I found that the best companies have made it their mission to solve one of just three types of problems.
I think of them as the three classic challenges of tech.
Everything You Need to Know about Mission Statements, You Learned in 8th-Grade English Class
Quick flashback to middle school. We all read The Old Man and the Sea. We all learn about the “Big Four” classic literary challenges:
- Man v. Man
- Man v. Himself
- Man v. Society
- Man v. Nature
Literature has four big challenges, but tech has only three.
Who is Your Company’s Real Enemy?
Making it your company’s mission to resolve one of these three challenges can give you and your team focus.
It can also help you understand your competitive landscape better, and help you make connections for partnerships or features you may not have previously considered.
For instance, Google and Slack both battle entropy. It makes sense for Slack to have a close integration with Google Docs (which it does).
Uber and SpaceX both pit themselves against The Unknown. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to say we’re going to Uber ourselves onto rockets one day.
Trying to solve one of the big three problems doesn’t guarantee success. But it’s a start.
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