It’s not a secret that, when you plan to launch a product or service, you should start with a problem in mind, i.e. What problem are you solving? But which attributes of that same problem should you look into? According to YC, one of the most known VC companies in Silicon Valley, these are those attributes:
Popular
The more people are having the problem you solve, the bigger your market is going to be. For example, a lot of people need to rest and eat while their children are distracted, and there’s McDonald’s and Burger King for that. Another example is that we all need to commute, and Uber got you covered. Note: This point may vary as sometimes we might need to attend a niche, which is also valid.
Growing
If the problem is growing year by year, you will never get out of customers, examples of this are contamination, energy, saving time or, at this moment in time, finding ways to work remotely.
Urgent
If the problem is urgent to solve, people are going to be more eager to pay for it. Aren’t you more willing to pay for a tooth fix if you are having a toothache right now?
Expensive
If the problem is currently too expensive to solve. One example here could be Amazon’s e-reader “Kindle”, although it will never have the beautiful smell of a physical book, it saves you a lot of money if you are a regular reader as e-books are way cheaper than physical ones.
Mandatory
A problem that people need to solve duly, like taxes or medical care.
Frequent
For a digital product like a web page or mobile app, the user should use it at least once a day and the more users the better. A great example here are social networks, we use them very frequently and are made with content sharing in mind.
It is YOUR problem
It is much better if the problem you are solving is a problem you have, it will give you the encouragement you need to keep going.
And that’s it, of course your problem won’t always have every single attribute, actually almost never, but if you understand your problem’s main attribute you are going to have a big advantage as you’ll know how to strategize around it.
