
Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution - patwalls
https://www.starterstory.com/blog/building-apps-for-shopify-fall-in-love-with-the-problem-not-the-solution
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aytekin
“It seemed like a tough proposition. I would need thousands of merchants
paying at least $20/month to create a successful business. I didn’t think it
would be possible, until I came across the Bold Commerce story. This four
person team in Winnipeg, Manitoba, had almost the same story as us. “Merchants
first, identified gaps in the app store, and deciding to build apps on
Shopify. Bold Commerce now employs almost 300 people, with no outside funding
to date, and with their growth solely on the Shopify platform. This case study
was enough to convince us to take the leap, I wanted us to be like Bold.”

Online Payments space is big. A company built on Shopify platform just for
Shopify users with 300 employees!

Even in my company (JotForm - a form builder) payment integrations is just one
of our minor features and we process over 500M/year on payment forms people
create.

~~~
jdpedrie
Oh man, JotForm is O.G. SAAS for me. I used to use it all the time back around
2011. Thanks for making my work back then so much less tedious!

~~~
collinmanderson
Yes, I remember comparing JotForm vs WuFoo back in 2008, back when the norm
for forms on small websites was custom server-side code.

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wegotscrewed
Keep your features close and your problems closer.

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drharby
I like this spin - im stealing it like the dirty thief i am

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siruncledrew
Time is better spent trying to find a solution to a problem than a problem for
a solution.

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qasimzafar
Not sure that the 'Identify, Test, Build, Measure framework' is yours to take
credit for, but other than that, it's a good read!

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hyperpallium
The only thing worse than not fully solving the problem is fully solving the
problem (because then you have no where to go, as competitors catch up).

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anotherhacker
Terrible advice.

You shouldn’t “fall in love” with anything

Everything is always changing. Consumer “problems”, their goals, their
constraints.. its all changing, all the time.

Instead, commit yourself to delivering progress to consumers, and adapting to
what that entails

~~~
37
It sounds like you read the headline, and not the article. In fact, it seems
like you didn't even scroll down, to look at the images. This one [0] in
particular caught my eye.

[0] [https://scontent-
yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/72c07367b0d95187...](https://scontent-
yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/72c07367b0d95187ae7179d015fd9cf9/5C4BF698/t51.2885-15/e35/38910947_520325111744903_3452700131667738624_n.jpg)

~~~
anotherhacker
I read the article.

It’s bad advice.

Here’s a famous paper on why:

[http://www.sympoetic.net/Managing_Complexity/complexity_file...](http://www.sympoetic.net/Managing_Complexity/complexity_files/1973%20Rittel%20and%20Webber%20Wicked%20Problems.pdf)

~~~
em-bee
i fail to see how the difficulty of problems and in particular how "commit
yourself to delivering progress to consumers, and adapting to what that
entails" make "not falling in love with the solution" bad advice.

you are absolutely right that the real focus should be to improve the lives of
people. but that is tangential to focusing on problems vs solutions.

when someone is in love with their solution, the first step is to realize that
they need to focus on the problem, and then the next is that they need to
focus on the people whose problems they are trying to solve.

so the advice in the article is ok, it could probably be better...

greetings, eMBee.

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zaidan15
hmm... but we can parrying the problem in our life

