

Start with a Problem, Not an Idea - skmurphy
http://blog.startupprofessionals.com/2009/03/startups-start-with-problem-not-idea.html

======
pchristensen
Somebody has been plagiarizing pg: <http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html>

OP: "Fix something that’s broken. In business, it seems to me that the
traditional banking business models are broken or at least no longer fit the
purpose. On the other end of the spectrum, Internet dating sites don’t seem to
work. They have millions of users, so they must be promising something people
want. And yet they work horribly. Just ask anyone who uses them."

to pg: "One way to make something people want is to look at stuff people use
now that's broken. Dating sites are a prime example. They have millions of
users, so they must be promising something people want. And yet they work
horribly. Just ask anyone who uses them. "

Or "Take a luxury and make it a commodity. People must want something if they
pay a lot for it. It is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically
cheaper if you try. When you make something dramatically cheaper, you sell
more, and people start to use it in different ways. For example, once cell
phones were so cheap that most people had one, people started using them as
cameras and Internet devices."

to pg's : "Another classic way to make something people want is to take a
luxury and make it into a commmodity. People must want something if they pay a
lot for it. And it is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically
cheaper if you try.

This was Henry Ford's plan. He made cars, which had been a luxury item, into a
commodity. But the idea is much older than Henry Ford."

~~~
skmurphy
Good catch: I took a hard look and have to agree that the number and phrasing
of the exact matches seem to be well above the level of coincidence. I posted
this on the site, curious as to what the reply will be. \---

I posted a pointer to this on <http://news.ycombinator.com/> at
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661440> and this reply
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661875> pointed out exact matches for six
sentences in an October 2005 essay by Paul Graham at
<http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html>

here are the matches:

    
    
       [dating sites]
       They have millions of users, so they must be promising something people want. 
       And yet they work horribly. 
       Just ask anyone who uses them.
    
       [T]ake a luxury and make it into a commmodity. 
       People must want something if they pay a lot for it. 
       And it is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically cheaper if you try.
    

Were you influenced by Graham's essay? The number and length of exact matches
seem well above the level of coincidence.

~~~
skmurphy
Martin Zwilling wrote back

    
    
       Thanks for the note. I have added a credit link at the end, and an apology note 
       as a comment to the blog following yours. 
       I’ll be more diligent on this in the future
    

He also added a postscript to the post this afternoon

    
    
       P.S. I would like to give credit to an October 2005 essay by Paul Graham for a 
       couple of the ideas above, at http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html

------
patio11
_Take a luxury and make it a commodity._

It works the other way, too. Water is a commodity -- a commodity which is,
essentially, free at the margin -- that is also a multi-billion dollar
business in the US. Much the same could be said about food.

(I am about to step on some toes. Turn away if you're easily offended.) There
are entire industries which are designed around the proposition "You are too
good to consume X. Poor people consume X. You should instead be consuming X
Prime. You can tell it is better than X, because it costs five times as much."

A separate but related issue: consumption of status goods among poor people.

In terms of selling B2B services, I am often amused by re-luxurization of
commoditized services: taking something which was once customized and
extraordinarily expensive but then made into cheap-and-infinite-scale and then
competing with the cheap-and-infinite with something that is a cut above but
which still scales.

Data centers circa 1996: luxury service. Web hosting: commodity service.
Slicehost: not a commodity service, but the marginal cost to the firm is still
close to zero.

Personalized financial advice: luxury service. Your bank's website and free
checking: commodity service. Mint: personalized financial advice, but at
scale.

Graphic design: luxury service. Stock icons: commodity service. 99designs:
commodity-priced luxury service that scales.

~~~
tomjen
People often come up with water as an example, but it fails on many levels:

 _In many cities the "native" water is full of chlorine_ If you travel to a
foreign country, you may not be able to drink the native water at all _If you
are not at home, getting water may not be possible unless you by it in
bottles._ Bottles enable you to carry around water, which is useful for car
trips, etc.

~~~
patio11
On the contrary, if smart people can be convinced to ignore the practically
inexhaustible and freely available supply of water in every building in most
first world countries, then I think the de-commoditization of water was an
astounding success.

(I mention this because it is intellectually interesting to me, not because I
hold contempt in my heart for people who buy bottled water, by the way.)

Incidentally: HN doesn't support unordered lists very well, particularly if
you like starting them with asterixes. The best alternative I have for you is
starting them with + signs and putting two linebreaks between points.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I think this falls flat as well. Many people have tap water at home that is a)
hard and/or b) doesn't taste very good. You can tell the difference.

~~~
ori_b
You can also buy a water filter, and get better tasting water extremely
cheaply when compared to bottles.

------
s3graham
This is part of the perverse reason I can't get behind the advice to start a
startup immediately after university.

Suffering at a large company for a while isn't self-flagellation, it hands you
hundreds of things needing solutions.

~~~
wlievens
I'm not sure if working at a large company is the most efficient way to get
inspired.

~~~
krschultz
It's not getting "inspired", its finding all the problems they have and are
incapable of fixing due to bureaucracy, then stepping out of the place and
coming back with a product that solves the problem. It is often easier to get
money out of big companies than change.

------
eterno
Couldnt DISAGREE more. The advice is extremely banal bordering on common sense
but most importantly discounts the fact that a lot of startups are built not
to solve any existing problem but perhaps to just better an existing solution.

The semantics are crucial here, because solving a problem almost implies that
it is something a customer 'understands' to be a problem and not just satisfed
with the status quo - that is true for almost everything - give me a better
house, car, laptop, email, search etc. etc. anyday and if its really good
enough I will switch.

The biggest startups were not found by scratching an 'itch' but through
founders idiosyncratic views of the status quo and how they belived (without
an MBA, without a customer survey and without figuring out if it was really an
'itch') on what was a better way, and for a long time without any external
validation.

Selling books online - how does that even make sense, the internet was
supposed to get rid of books but Amazon found a way. The iPod - if no one even
knew something like this can be built, how can it possibly be a part of their
'itch'. Twitter - I bet there was no itch here too.

~~~
iends
Your last little blurb is off the mark: Mp3 players existed long before the
iPod, but they had poor usability and no centralized store to legally purchase
music. Bookstores existed long before amazon, but their inventory was limited.
Blogging existed long before twitter, but it was a bit overkill to use
existing solutions for micro-blogging.

~~~
ahoyhere
Yes, but everyone was happy with the status quo of MP3 players at the time.
Nobody wanted the iPod. Everybody said it would fail. And certainly no one was
asking for a centralized music store. Pfff!

I don't really agree with OC on other points, but the iPod _really_ didn't
scratch an itch. It changed the game by creating something new, not something
that "solved a problem."

To say the iPod solved a problem is pure hindsight.

~~~
gnaritas
> Yes, but everyone was happy with the status quo of MP3 players at the time

No they weren't, most people couldn't figure them out.

> To say the iPod solved a problem is pure hindsight.

No it isn't, the iPod brought it to the masses by making it simple enough for
everyone to use.

------
zealog
Absolutely true. Nothing here is ground breaking, but it seems like so many
people forget this. My greatest successes have always come from trying to
"scratch my own itch." In fact, it's usually something completely out of left
field that never seemed like a business that turns out to resonate with
others.

------
jyothi
The title itself is a ton of advice. So simple and so profound.

I think 'start with a problem' - creates a clear definition of success (solve
the problem), demands focus and makes everything so simple to figure out.

------
maurycy
What is the problem behind Twitter, by the way?

~~~
didip
Your question brings up my age old question. Communication on the internet has
been solved multiple times, again-and-again, since IRC/mailing list (That's as
far back as I can remember).

Then, why there's still room to grow for IM, Meebo, and now Twitter?

------
knuton
I agree. Consider twitter on the other hand.

I would argue that while it may have been introduced to solve a certain
“problem” (communication hub for friends/local groups, “I want to have a
dispatch service that connects us on our phones using text.”), its success
comes from accidentally satisfying different needs.

------
run4yourlives
The counter of course is the Blue Ocean Strategy, in which the product solves
a problem that people didn't know they had.

Given the innovation of the web, Blue Ocean is just as viable than these other
four methods.

There are several ways to implement a winning business, talking points tend to
forget that.

------
known

        What is the Problem?
        Who is the Customer?
        Who is the Competitor?
        What is the Revenue Model?

A case study
[http://xml.gov/documents/completed/bah/registryBusinessCase....](http://xml.gov/documents/completed/bah/registryBusinessCase.htm)

------
ruibal
<http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html>. Similar, no?

------
davidw
Good post, but I dislike the "ideas are worthless because there is no market
for them" idea:

<http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/04/26/ideas-are-worthless>

------
debt
Why even post a link to the blog? Why not just the headline? I get the gist. I
don't really need an entire anecdotal blog post to loosely explain a piece of
advice.

------
seejay
Couldn't agree more! Kevin Rose's Problem was, not being able to get news to
the SlashDot home page. And we all know how successful the solution he came up
with.

------
Ammar
Not always true, for example twitter didn't solve a new problem. People could
communicate before just fine; it just provided another method to stay
connected.

