Can't afford to work on a bad startup idea? Solve an ITCHY problem.
Startups are dangerous
Many of us want to build cool things, but we don't have the resources to survive more than a couple of mistakes.
If you want to minimise the inherent risk of trying to build genuinely interesting things as a career, I developed the ITCHY framework for you.
This short post outlines a simple idea I've been brewing for a long time. If you find it helpful, please consider sharing it with other people who like to build.
There's no foolproof recipe for great ideas
But we might be able to devise a recipe for great problems – which are often the basis for great ideas.
I'm a huge fan of Paul Graham's famous essay 'How to Get Startup Ideas'. You might even want to read that first before continuing here.
Here's the gist:
The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself.
I also recommend Uri Levine's book 'Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution'.
A central theme in these founders’ theses is the time-tested advice to “scratch your own itches,” meaning to solve your own problems.
Why it works – and taking it further
Many have written at length about why successful startups solve problems experienced first-hand by their founders.
Essentially, trying to solve a problem that isn't really a problem is why most founders fail.
If you have a problem yourself, you know it's a problem for at least one person.
You're already ahead of the game.
Multiplier: you'll also be able to recognise when a solution fits the bill, which shortens your learning feedback loop – at least in the beginning.
It's far more common for startups to fail because they underserved a huge market they didn't understand than by overserving a tiny market they did understand.
FOUR OTHER common mistakes I see with problem selection
- Problems that founders have no intrinsic interest in. There's nothing about the problem that captivates them. This leaves them vulnerable to becoming fatally enamoured with a specific solution, the identity of founding, or the allure of raising large sums of capital instead.
- Problems that are totally intractable. Often, this is just because a founder's understanding isn't nuanced enough to break it down into manageable parts. And so it stays unmanageable, forever.
- Problems that are muddled and unclear. If you can't explain a problem clearly to other people, you probably don't understand it well enough to solve it – or convince people to solve it with you.
- Problems that are low-value. They might be real problems, but they don't hurt badly enough to justify handing over cash.
So let's flip that around.
Introducing: ITCHY
ITCHY is a mnemonic I've devised to avoid bad problems.
It covers at least 80% of the most common mistakes.
It stands for Interesting, Tractable, Clear, High-value, and Yours.
I hope it saves you a lot of time, money, and heartbreak 💔
Interesting
Interesting problems are interesting to you.
Whether a problem is interesting because it keeps you up at night in a burning fit of rage, or because you spotted it hidden in plain sight from a hard-won vantage point, it doesn't matter.
It just has to be interesting enough that you won't mind the inevitable pain of solving it – and then getting that solution to market.
Tractable
Tractable doesn't mean easy.
Easy problems are almost always low-value and indefensible.
Tractable just means it can (probably) be done.
Most problems worth solving are pretty hard to solve, but you should have some thesis on:
a) why it's approachable now
and
b) by you and your team.
Whether that's because you're uniquely positioned to solve it through experience, skill, or domain knowledge – or because of a change in some external factor like a new technology wave – it should probably be difficult but no longer impossible.
Clear
A problem clearly described is a problem clearly understood.
All well-described problems have these three elements:
- A subject. The person who suffers the problem (and eventually uses the solution).
- A goal. A need or 'Job To Be Done' (JTBD) that the subject is trying to satisfy.
- A friction. Something that gets in the way of the subject achieving the goal, making it expensive in time, money or emotion.
Want to go deeper on this? Read: 02: Write problems like this
High-value
A problem can be considered 'high-value' when it's either extremely painful, extremely prevalent, or both.
Pain is a rough proxy for willingness to pay.
Prevalence is how many people will pay you.
Paul Graham recommends solving problems that are extremely painful for a very small group of people – of which you count yourself a member – and then expanding from there.
It seems to work better than the other way around, and certainly better than both at once.
Yours
Finally, we return to where we started.
Scratching your own itches.
Wherever possible, solve a problem that's yours.
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