The Bad Startup Advice Everyone Loves to Give
Yes, even your favorite VC.
Intro
Let’s face it, we’ve all heard it:
“You can’t have a solution in search of a problem”
“You have to start with the problem first.”
— All startup advisors, circa all of humanity
While this isn’t exactly untrue, I’d like to provide some nuance here that I think will help many founders and entrepreneurs out. I mean for Pete's sake, some of us just like to build! We shouldn’t be punished for this… right?
For the rest of this blog post, I am going to provide a scenario — with both steps and common traps founders fall into — that will help entrepreneurs, indie hackers, and maybe even some VCs, understand why building first and finding the problem later isn’t always the worst idea (hot take, I know).
Scenario
Imagine you are a tinkerer. (I could also go with researcher here, but I opted for the option that more people could relate to). You love nothing more than to create cool gadgets and invent new things.
One day in your mad laboratory (your mom’s garage) you develop a new type of scanner that can scan things at 100x the distance of the next best scanner on the market. What kind of scanner do you ask? I don’t know. This is a hypothetical example. You’ve now created a new technology, a solution you may say. Notice how you did not have a problem in mind before creating this scanner? That’s okay!
Okay, so you go ahead and file for a patent for this new technology you’ve created. (This step is optional, but recommended if you’re building hardware). What to do now? You have some cool ideas of things you could build using this tech, but you read this blog post, so you know that the FIRST thing to do is talk to people.
Step 1. Talk to potential customers until you find one that’s excited about your technology/product idea.
Going along with this example, let’s say you go to your local police station because you think that your scanning technology could be used to create a new and improved radar to check if people are speeding. This could be a good idea, and an inexperienced founder may just go ahead and create this new product. But this is trap #1!
Trap 1. Immediately creating a product (problem-solver) out of the new technology (solution) you just created.
So you go to the police station and they tell you that they actually don’t have the budget for any new technology, and they are also phasing out speed checks on highways, so new radar guns wouldn’t be useful. Phew, glad you asked!
Onto the next potential solution. Now you approach a mining company because you realize that your new-fangled scanning technology can actually scan caves to detect deposits. The mining company is totally excited about it and states they would love to buy some type of scanner like that. So you immediately make it for them! WRONG.
Trap 2. Creating a product from one customer simply “loving your idea” or even saying they’d buy it.
This brings us to step two:
Step 2. Go back to the lab, fueled by the excitement of possibly having an eager customer, and draft up an LOI, MVP, and pricing.
So now you go back to your mom’s garage to create mockups/MVPs, find out how much this scanner is going to cost to make (and ultimately how much you’re going to sell it for), and draft up some LOIs. The Letter of Intent, or “an agreement to agree”, will be very important in your next meeting.
And poof, you’re there. So you’re at the next meeting with the mining company. You present them with your MVP and how much you’ll sell it to them for. They still love it!!! So you leave and start building right? NO! This is trap 3!
Trap 3. You leave the meeting before getting your customer to sign an LOI.
Now that you know they love it, ask them to sign your LOI that you oh-so-smartly drafted up before the meeting stating that they agree to buy x quantity of the product for x price once you build it. This way there is no chance that they back out at a later date.
Step 3. Get your customer to sign your LOI.
Now you are free to create your product, using the solution you created without a problem because you know with certainty that you have found a problem for your solution.
Summary
Step 1. Talk to potential customers until you find one that’s excited about your technology/product idea.
Trap 1. Immediately creating a product (problem-solver) out of the new technology (solution) you just created.
Trap 2. Creating a product from one customer simply “loving your idea” or even saying they’d buy it.
Step 2. Go back to the lab, fueled by the excitement of possibly having an eager customer, and draft up an LOI, MVP, and pricing.
Trap 3. You leave the meeting before getting your customer to sign an LOI.
Step 3. Get your customer to sign your LOI.
Extrapolating
Ok Luca, this was interesting, but I’m not a tinkerer, nor an inventor, nor a researcher. How does this advice apply to me? Well, my oh-so-talentless friend, do not worry, I am in the same boat as you!
This advice can largely be used for ANY product you create — even if you did not create it from some mad laboratory. If you started with a problem in mind (it could even be one that you, yourself, have!) you should still utilize this framework to make sure there is demand for your product (that someone else built obviously).
This is largely in tune with classical startup advice stating that founders should constantly be talking to their customers and should certainly not build a full product before talking to customers.
The big idea here is just to build! You don’t always need to have grand ideas to start something. Sometimes the hardest part is just that — starting.
All Wrapped Up
It’s okay to create solutions before you know the problem, but you had better make sure you know your problem and customer (by following these steps) before you GTM.
So to all the tinkerers out there — Keep on tinkering.
