
Ask HN: How to Choose Problem? - valand
Some start-ups solves very simple problems that I didn&#x27;t see as sellable, yet they sell.<p>How does one find and choose a problem worth mending that can also bring people working on it food on to.their table?
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iapsngh
Often cited, Dropbox solved a problem that many thought was simple and didn't
see as saleable.

Besides being there at the right time, marketing and clicking, the key thing
was that it provided an easy way to take the pain away from setting up a
system for backup and sync in the cloud, specially for non-technical users.

There is no sure shot way of finding such problems. If you look around, most
problems not only appear simple but are in-fact simple to solve. It's the way
you solve those 'simple' problems will put food on the table.

You have to try and fail fast to find the one.

That said, there are no shortcuts. The start-up road is long and hard; and it
will try to sap the energy out of you. Be prepared for the long haul.

~~~
valand
Thanks for the new perspective

------
mindcrime
I don't think there's one simple, straight-forward, cookie-cutter answer to
this. There are a lot of different ways you could approach this, depending on
... stuff.

But to start... I would say you should begin not by thinking in terms of
identifying a problem, but by thinking in terms of identifying a _candidate_
problem. That is, some hypothesis that you can then turn around and try to
validate. (I won't get all Popperian here and point out that you can really
only invalidate hypotheses, but instead will just lean on our intuitive notion
of what it means to validate a hypotheses).

Once you have a candidate hypotheses (or two, or three, whatever) there _is_ a
somewhat straight-forward process for how to validate it and (potentially)
turn it into a business. That process is laid out and explained in _The Four
Steps to the Epiphany_ and _The Startup Owner 's Manual_.

Anyway, back to our "candidate hypotheses". The most obvious way to generate
one is from personal experience. Eg, if you have worked as, say, a surgeon,
you will probably already know a lot about what problems surgeons face.

OTOH, if you think you want to sell to a certain domain, but you don't have
actual experience in that domain, you could make it a point to cultivate
personal relationships with people who are in that domain, as well as doing a
deep-drive into "the literature" of that domain, taking classes, watching
videos, etc. But at the end of the day, if you're going to try to build a
business selling something to, say, fire departments, you're probably better
off having been a firefighter.

It might be a tough nut to crack, and the logistics might be tricky, but you
may be able to find a way to embed yourself in the domain you're interested
in. Volunteering, or just asking to "shadow" somebody for a period of time
(this is where those pre-existing personal relationships come into play).

Another angle is "problems that are so general that they always exist."
There's a famous phrase, the exact words of which I forget, which summarizes
this nicely... it's something like "people will always want to pay less for
things, have more free time, be healthier, have more sex, etc." So if you can
come up with something that addresses any of these highly general topics, you
might have a good candidate. Alan Kay, in one of his videos[3][4] talks about
referencing Donald Brown's book _Human Universals_ [5] as a source for
thoughts on these "universal" themes. There's a LOT of good stuff in those two
videos, so if you haven't seen them yet, I'd highly advice watching them.

Another thought is to find places where people like to complain, and listen to
their complaints. Find any forums, sub-reddits, or sites named something like
"XYZSucks" and pay attention to what people are complaining about. Maybe you
can build the replacement for XYZ that doesn't suck, or at least a complement
/ accessory for XYZ that mitigates some specific instance of suckage.

I'm sure there are a hundred other ways to approach this, so be creative.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-
Blank/dp/09...](https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-
Blank/dp/0989200507)

[2]: [https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-
Step/dp/09...](https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-
Step/dp/0984999302)

[3]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id1WShzzMCQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id1WShzzMCQ)

[4]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8VZlPBx_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8VZlPBx_0)

[5]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Universals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Universals)

~~~
mindcrime
I forgot to mention this earlier, but there are also forums like the
"SomebodyMakeThis" sub-reddit. Basically, a place for people to talk about
things they wish existed. This could probably help seed some ideas for you as
well.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/)

~~~
valand
Thanks for the references.

