Act One: Misidentifying the problem
The №1 rule of entrepreneurship is to validate your idea before acting on it. I knew this, so why did I fail to do it?
The idea was to create an embeddable packing list for travel bloggers. It’s pretty straightforward: bloggers would create lists using our software and paste a snippet of code onto their site that would display the list. They’d be able to add item descriptions and affiliate links.
In January 2016, I was preparing for a 6-week trip to Nicaragua. I found it difficult to find any good resources that would help me pack for the trip. I was able to find generic packing lists but nothing was specific to the region or duration of the trip. This made me think that I’d identified a good problem to solve.
However, I made a mistake. I misidentified the problem as a software problem rather than a content problem. In other words, facilitating the content creation process for content that wasn’t being created isn’t useful.
Now, this doesn’t mean the idea would necessarily fail, it just means it would be twice as difficult to pull off. In order to succeed, it would require two points of persuasion: (1) you’d have to persuade travel bloggers to create more packing lists and (2) you’d have to persuade them to use your software to display them.
To use an analogy, this would be like if Slack had to simultaneously encourage organizations to have more internal communication and use its software for this purpose. Slack is widely successful because the prerequisite (internal communication) was already established, but the systems for conducting the communication were disparate and inefficient.
Creating the Problem
Another approach is to create the problem and offer the solution. Pharmaceutical companies do this all the time. For example, have you heard of Restless Leg Syndrome? This is a condition that “can’t be cured” but “treatment may help.” Solution: “We’ve got some pills for you!”
The beauty/fashion industry employs this method as well. First, they “suggest” that you aren’t sexy or attractive enough, and then they generously offer up a solution. Of course, the problem never really existed until they planted it in your head.
Companies that both create the problem and offer the solution are at the foundation of the modern consumer culture.
Tech companies, however, rarely pull this off successfully. In fact, I can’t think of any that have (but please share if you can!)
Diagnosing a Real Problem
Shortly after releasing the beta version of Packstack, Chase and I realized we weren’t excited about developing a push marketing campaign. Push marketing requires you to convince people that they need your product.
Instead, we wanted to create something that would be appropriate for a pull marketing campaign. Pull marketing assumes that the consumer demand already exists and that your task is merely to expose people to the concept.
In order to execute a successful pull marketing campaign, you have to correctly diagnose a real problem, you can’t just make one up.
And so, this is where we’re at. We’re actively attempting to validate the idea we want to pivot into: a generalized list-building platform.
In an upcoming post, I’ll detail our process for validating this idea. I’ll also share some of our early product sketches and the methods we’re using to scope the MVP.
