The Critical Problem (And How to Find It)
Recently, I contemplated how we arrived at the product that allowed us to build a sustainable company and eventually sell it. I retraced our steps and found a number of interesting things. I've been part of a number of software startups before, and only with FeedbackPanda did we do these things in the right order. I'll be writing more about this in the coming weeks, and today, I want to talk about problems.
Actually, not problems. A problem. THE problem.
Everyone has a large number of issues they're dealing with in their lives and professions. But not all of these problems are a good choice for building a sustainable business around solving them. Your best bet is finding the one problem that people need solved more than any other. The critical problem.
In my research, I have found that a critical problem has these attributes:
- it’s painful and wastes time or money
- it’s non-optional and people can’t opt-out
- it occurs frequently and repeatedly
- it takes some time to be solved each time
- it makes people build their own crude solutions with basic tools
If you find a problem that checks these boxes for a large number of people in the niche you're in, you are sitting on a gold mine.
People will be able to see the value of a solution that's addressing this problem.
They will be willing to pay good money for something that:
- saves them time
- saves them money
- makes them money
Find a problem where a solution does one or more of these things, and you're half-way there.
You can read more about this on my blog at Finding the Critical Problem: How to Work on The Right Things.
Does your problem check these boxes? Or is there an adjacent, underlying, more specific or more general problem that you have encountered?
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Finding a 'critical problem' to solve is far from "sitting in a gold mine" or "half-way there".
You forget about the amount of competition and difficulty of implementing solution...
Stupid example: Cancer is a pretty fucking critical problem, but implementing cure for cancer ain't quite that easy.
Kevin Hale's talk [1] about ideas and "good problem to solve" has very similar list of attributes as your list, except he ads "impacts lot of people".
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOtCl5PU8F0&
Thank you for pointing that out! Yes, these phrases were meant figuratively and in the context of finding the critical problem within a niche audience.
The point of the argument is made in comparison with other problems your customers within the particular niche face. There is still work to do and competition to beat. But choosing the right problem to solve will make both easier. The article and the text above is focused only on finding the problem.
In indie hacker businesses, the “impact lots of people” is still there, but it’s limited to people within the niche. You can’t bootstrap a cancer-curing business. But you can bootstrap a SaaS that solves a particular problem for a particular set of people in a particular industry.
Agreed on all points. Just small clarification, I didn't mean that you missed the "impacts lot of people" attribute in your list, just wanted to point to a talk that had arrived in very similar conclusions as you did.
Thanks for the link. I haven’t seen that one. Might work it into the article! And in a way, it HAS to impact a meaningful number of people, relatively to the size of the niche you’re serving.
Thank you very much for giving me something to think about!
I've tried this here on IH.
Asked people about a problem and how they deal with it.
There was some reaction. Number of comments was encouraging. But most people seemed to be not interested in a solution.
What do you think I should make out of this?
I could share the post and you can see it yourself if you like.
Yes, please share.
Also, that is great already. It seems out of all the people who you asked, some had more pain than others. I would reach out to them, schedule a video call, and drill down deeper into that. There is something specific to those people that makes them respond positively. Find out what that is.
Nice advice! I'll do that.
This is the post I am talking about:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/ask-ih-how-do-you-record-meeting-notes-and-action-items-how-do-you-track-if-they-are-done-3beea9989e?utm_campaign=forum-notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=indie-hackers-emails
Just had a chance to check out that thread. That is exactly how I would approach it. Determine if people are happy with what they use, figure out root causes, and engage with the people who care to clarify why they care.
It seems that with your idea in particular, you’re up against heavily integrated processes. Your solution will need to replace those, so it has to be very clear that the effort of switching is worth it.
People have systems in place that look a bit scrappy and makeshift, so that is a good start. That might make import/export comparability very important for adoption.
You might want to niche down some more. Find a specific industry that has a lot of meetings + tasks that are not easy to deal with for a particular reason. Then solve that problem really well. That might be easier than trying to address the market of all people who have meetings.
These are just my initial thoughts, and I have done no market research, so it might not be too accurate.
Thank you very much, this is very very helpful.
Now I need to figure out a way to "niche down" even more.
I will try to think of them myself and also talk to a few people from different industries. See if they are having a lot of meetings and have problems communicating the meeting action items. First guess is marketing agencies, for example, they hold periodic meetings with their customers.
Is that the right method? or do you have anything else to suggest when it comes to "niching down"?
Thank you for posting this. This is a great solid and short summary of what makes a good product.
Thank you! Much appreciated.