04: How I started a new venture this week using Problem Harvesting

Alright, it's time to give up the goods.

In today's 🥜 Kernel, I'll lay out the foundations of Problem Harvesting, the method at the core of ProblemKit.

If you've been toying with entrepreneurship for a while, you've probably experienced something similar to me.

I was working a full-time corporate job at a big company. My parents were very proud.

(They didn't understand what my job was, per se, but they were definitely really proud that I had a good one.)

Except... I dreamed of building a business.

To make matters worse, it was my job to analyse and work with startups, so I was painfully close to the game, but never quite on the pitch.

We even tried building a new digital health startup from within the company. It looked like it was going to work, but it was too vulnerable to changes in corporate strategy and we always had to ask for permission to do anything.

And entrepreneurs hate asking for permission.

Entrepreneurs also don't muster courage from thin air. They don't need to attend motivational speeches or build baseless confidence.

Some more things you don't need before you get started:

• An MBA
• Funding
• An office

Founders only need three things to get started, and the rest builds from there.

• A problem to attack
• Some time
• Snacks

The rest will come later.

Problem Harvesting is designed to create instant momentum from a standing start by optimising the search for a fascinating problem.

Let's get into it.

🥜 Kernel

Problem Harvesting

At its core, Problem Harvesting is a practice for finding something new to work on by dissecting our own lived experiences with deep intentionality and structure (see: Scratch your own Peruvian Warts).

We're scraping life for problems to solve.

While you can harvest problems continuously from day to day – which I am cultivating a habit of doing – I find that structuring projects around defined activities is what makes Harvesting such a reliable system.

Today I'll set out the basic framework. In later editions we'll go deeper on each component to optimise the approach.

The three pillars of Problem Harvesting:

• Do Something. This is a defined activity from which we'll harvest problems within a set timeframe. For example: carrying out a houseplant care routine, a brain surgery, or a trip to the supermarket.
  
  As a rule of thumb, pick something you love, have done more times than 95% of people, or have studied deeply.
  
  (Note: the activity you pick is really important for founder-problem fit; we'll dive into this in future editions.)
• Capture Problems. While we Do Something, we're going to keep a log of problems that we encounter during the activity. We'll also stop and reflect at the end of the activity to scoop up any problems we missed.
• Evaluate Problems. Once we have finished capturing problems, we'll stop and evaluate them, arriving at our Target Problem.

With a Target Problem identified, it's then our job to set about validating and solving it before coming back to find new ones.

This prevents the dreaded 'scatterbrain'.

It may look simple, but there's a lot of variation and artistry in how we can optimise these practices, which I'll be building on later.

For now, I'll summarise how I've used Problem Harvesting in the last week to start an exciting new project...

🦧 In the wild

First, some context:

I like plants.

Do something.

Just as I normally do, I decided to carry out my plant care routine, but this time with a twist: I did it as a Problem Harvest activity.

It takes roughly 30 minutes every couple of weeks to water my plants, check for issues, carry out any maintenance, and order supplies I might be running low on.

Capture Problems.

This time, I kept a notepad with me and maintained vigilance for problems, making sure to capture them as I executed my routine (this is important – some of the best problems vanish from memory within seconds).

Every time I noticed something was unpleasant, difficult, insufficient or confusing, I immediately wrote down the problem using the Subject, Goal, Friction recipe.

Here are a couple of examples:

As someone with an ugly bathroom that gets lots of natural light, I want to decorate it with a thriving vertical garden but the soil at the top dries out faster than at the bottom, leaving me with a combo of over- and under-watered plants.

As someone who's terrified of overwatering his favourite plants, I want to thoroughly soak the soil until it's running from the bottom of the pot without leaving them sitting in water but it's time-consuming, effortful, and messy to lift heavy plants out of their decorative pots into trays or to the sink.

Thrilling stuff, I know.

Not all problems are going to end up surviving your Evaluation later, but it's critical we capture them all without discrimination during the Do Something phase.

After I finished my routine, I took some time to sit down and reflect on any additional problems I'd noticed while the activity was still fresh in my mind.

One stood out to me in particular as I stared at the bottom of my Fiddle Leaf Fig, sitting in its base of homemade potting mix:

As someone with a range of plants originating from around the world, I want each species to thrive by replicating its natural environment but each one is sitting in the same basic houseplant soil from a gardening shop.

Moreover, houseplant potting soil is often pasteurised or sterilised, meaning it's devoid of all the other living species that I know support plant growth under the surface.

Evaluate Problems.

For this project, that last problem clearly leapt out of the page.

It was immediately interesting to me because, while I was a resident at the ZINC VC venture builder earlier this year, I'd heard about how the regenerative farming movement is starting to make use of native soil fungi and bacteria to symbiotically support the growth of crop plants.

I had an immediate sense this problem was tractable.

I also happen to be into mycology – growing and foraging my own mushrooms. If you've seen the Netflix documentary How To Change Your Mind or read Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life, you're in my tribe.

The question arose: how might I recreate living West African soil for my West African Fiddle Leaf Fig?

Despite my hobbies, I wouldn't have identified this opportunity without Problem Harvesting first. You'll naturally find that your skills, hobbies and experiences will only emerge as relevant after you notice fresh problems.

Usually, at this point I'd take more time to evaluate and compare the other 20+ problems I'd captured, but this was a nice instance where one problem stood out immediately above the rest.

Don't ignore this.

If this happens to you, I suggest you run with it and see where it takes you before trying to find any new problems.

It might be a dead end, but cultivating curiosity is the most important thing here.

In future editions, I'll share a more systematic analysis for evaluating the potential of different problems and comparing them against each other. We'll go deep into topics like problem sizing, tractability, and founder-problem fit.

Now what?

In the days following my Problem Harvest, I've quickly moved to ideate and mock up a range of solutions, share them with friends, get feedback, and investigate the technical feasibility.

I've been trekking out to garden centres and quizzing soil scientists.

In other words, I'm building something. I'm a founder again.

And this is what I want for you!

Whether my new idea will work out or not, I don't know. But regardless of the outcome, I'm looking forward to sharing the results with you in the coming weeks.

🍭 Weekly problem

As a remote worker, I want to work for an hour or two from local cafes but they've all started making the seating uncomfortable and enforcing no-laptop policies to discourage people from hogging the tables – and I don't want an expensive office membership!

🛸 Misc.

An evolution of my interest in fungi has brought me to the magical world of fermentation.

If you're curious about making your own lacto-fermented honey, rose kombucha, or grasshopper garum, I heartily recommend the Noma Guide to Fermentation by René Redzepi and David Zilber.

As always, not sponsored!

Wishing you lots of problems,

Alex