Startup Series #3 — Discovering Customer Needs
Discovering Opportunities in Non-Consumption
If you are an aspiring founder trying to find a problem to solve, besides looking at something people are clearly dissatisfied with, also look at problems that people aren’t being vocal about, but are ‘compromising’.
If there is no good option available, a lot of people would choose not to use any product at all.
Things that people are compromising with often manifest as complaints or excuses:
“Yes, I can schedule a meeting and invite people via google calendar, but communicating the schedule is tough.”
“Learning a new language is expensive, I also can’t commit to a weekly physical class that is far from where I stay.”
“The traffic condition is bad, but the public transport in town isn’t convenient, what else can I do besides driving?”
(However, once a certain phenomenon develops, it will be hard to change the behaviour or go back to the previous state — more on this next time or read Sapien’s — Agricultural Revolution “History’s biggest fraud.”)
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Remember, many times people do something not because they want it, it’s because there’s no better option available.
The thing to take note of here is the solution you might find might not be straightforward and might lead you to change/ pivot drastically to deliver them. But that shouldn’t scare you, be obsessed with the problem you are trying to solve, not with the solution you have.
Once you have identified the problem (need) and come up with one key solution, what are the other experiences you need to take note of when launching your MVP (Minimum Viable Product)? When you have only got one main thing & value, You will be tempted to make it better, and have more features before you release, but what does your customer (or early adopter) see? I’ll share my thoughts on this at Startup Series #4
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Continuing Post: Startup Series #4 — Your MVP (or product) is not the only thing customer sees.
You can find the beginning of the startup series here:
Sharpening Your Hunch for Success — Introduction to the Startup Series
