What problem are you solving? The problem should be big enough and difficult enough. This is something that everybody is talking about. How difficult was to solve the problem of sending disappearing photos? Well not so big. But, Snapchat is close to $4bn now!

And if there is a problem that is big and that is difficult then Larry Page is probably on to it already or may be Mr. Musk is thinking about it while you are reading this. I am talking about self-driving cars and Hyperloop.

So what does this mean? Big companies will solve all big and difficult problems? Yes they will solve a lot of problems. But they will solve the obvious problems. The problems that are generally solved by the most successful startups are those that were not considered as problems.

Lets see a few examples:

Problem 1 — I want to rent my bedroom to a stranger? Does this sound like a problem? Well if you would have asked someone 6 years ago, whether they would be willing to rent their bedroom to a complete stranger for one night, they would freak out. (Airbnb)

Problem 2 — I want a place to put pictures of things that I aspire for? Seriously are you nuts. (Pinterest)

An awesome list of such companies is compiled here by Michael Wolfe: http://www.quora.com/Survey-Questions/What-were-the-most-ridiculous-startup-ideas-that-eventually-became-successful.

Ok so what’s my point after 200 words of rambling and facts repetition. Try and find out that unique problem that no one else has located. Even better if they don’t like the problem when you tell them. So, in your next startup don’t try and solve a problem that all your friends agree is a problem. In your funding pitch if the VCs are “easily” convinced that you are solving a good problem then in my opinion it’s a red flag.

Ideally, 90% people should have one of the following opinions about the problem you are trying to solve:

1) There is no unique problem that you are trying to solve?

2) It is already been solved to a desirable extent?

3) It is impossible to solve (this might need some tech breakthrough. For example: If you want to make a search engine 10 times better than Google. Well good luck with that!!).

The remaining 10% of the people should think that you have lost it!!

Identifying the correct problem is the most important part and the end-users might not be able to tell you that as they themselves don’t know what is the underlying problem they are facing. It can be as simple as one extra click by the consumer to complete some process. You eliminate that extra click and you might be the next big thing.

One line take-away: “Billion dollar companies are made by solving problems that are either non-intuitive, or non-solvable or non-existent!”