Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A handbook for entrepreneurs

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Uri Levine brings a vast entrepreneurial experience to the table. Thus, When Uri Levine gives you an advice, you want to read it. He shares valuable insights in this book on how to embrace the challenges and problems during the way of building a successful business. When thinking about building a startup, I always start with the problem. Think of a problem—a big problem, something worth solving, something that would make the world a better place. Ask yourself, who has this problem? If you happen to be the only person on the planet with this problem, then go to a shrink. It’s much cheaper and easier than building a startup. But if a lot of people have this problem, go and speak with those people to understand their perception of the problem. Know the reality, and only then start building the solution. If you follow this path and your solution works, it’s guaranteed to create value. When I heard entrepreneurs pitch their Business Model Canvases, I heard a lot about what they were going to build (value proposition/solution) and a lot about how they were going to deliver it to customers (channels, key activities, key partners, key resources, customer relationships). But I didn’t hear anything about why customers would need or want your solution in the first place or how you would get them to switch from what they are doing today to your solution. No problems in your business model is a problem. by Uri Levine and was extremely impressed. As the co-founder of Waze, Levine brings a wealth of entrepreneurial experience to the table and shares valuable insights in this book on how to embrace the challenges and problems that inevitably arise in business.

If the job is adequately getting done, that’s bad news for you because it’s hard to displace an existing solution with a similar-sounding value proposition. If, on the other hand, you find the job isn’t getting done “well enough,” that’s great news for you. The obstacles or problems getting in the way of the customer achieving their desired outcome are where you’ll find space for innovation. Throughout the book, Levine unveils the truth behind the hardship of building a startup, side by side providing a cookbook for entrepreneurs, with the hope that the readers will use the insights and Startips to guide their way and increase their chances to succeed. If many people have this problem, however, then go and speak to them to understand their perception of the problem. Only afterwards, build the solution. If you follow this path, and your solution eventually works, you will be creating value, which is the essence of your journey. If you start with the solution, however, you might be building something that no one cares about, and that is frustrating when you’ve invested so much effort, time, and money. In fact, most start-ups will die because they were unable to figure out product-market fit, which in many cases happens when focusing on the solution rather than the problem. There are many reasons to start with the problem, in addition to increasing the likelihood of creating value. Another key reason: your story will be much simpler and more engaging; people understand the frustration and can connect to that.So what is the issue with the problem definition default? In our experience, there are at least three:

O Waze faz sucesso em muitos países, mas talvez o mais significativo seja o Brasil, onde se tornou uma ferramenta indispensável para os motoristas, com grande impacto na forma como planejam seus horários e garantem a pontualidade. Isso vai além da economia de tempo – trata-se de capacitar os indivíduos para que gerenciem suas vidas com mais eficiência. As you’ll see in this post, the “Innovator Bias” is a sneaky troll — rearing its ugly head, not just during ideation but throughout the innovation lifecycle, often when you least expect it. At each step, some of the most fundamental truths come from a deep understanding of problems before solutions. The Big Idea

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And, algorithmic and data labelling laws empower individuals by making them aware of how that data is collected and used in decision-making algorithms. For example, FICA scores are fairly transparent allowing for a degree of oversight, but new generations of machine learning algorithms being used to make decisions often obfuscate latent and systemic biases through proxy variables. Indeed, Matt Andrews has said “complex challenges cannot be solved, they can only be managed.” Complex challenges are characterized by unknowns within an interconnected system, unknowns that involve risk. Leadership in the face of such challenges is about taking informed risks. It is about using available information and a diversity of ideas to characterize the problem. Ronald Heifitz has argued that we don’t need leadership when we know what to do, we need it in the face of a challenge. Complex challenges have many stakeholders with many competing interests, and managing such challenges is about the distribution of loss and about mobilizing and enabling others to take purposeful risks with you. Through this social framing we encourage others to invest themselves in the challenges that we care about. The U.S. Congress is now more politically divisive than it has been at almost any point in the past one hundred years. Convincing others that any policy challenge is important enough to devote time and resources requires political capital. Lawmakers must use leadership in compromising good politics to achieve good policy, by supporting a solution that cannot possibly satisfy every competing interest of diverse stakeholders, and by doing what Marty Linkski’s has called “disappointing your own people at the rate that they can absorb.” The book is easy to read and describes all aspects of building a product, or service, from how to define the problem that worth solving, fundraising, hiring and firing, startup rollercoaster journey, product market fit (PMF) and to growth and to the end of a startup (the exit).

The first part of the journey, and perhaps the most important part, is figuring out product market feed, meaning the value it brings to users. Without this, your idea is dead in the water. No company skipped figuring out product market feed. “Once a company figures out product market feed they don’t change it.” I’ve asked many entrepreneurs why their startup failed, and about half say that the team was not right. I’d ask further, what do you mean the team was not right? Not good enough was one reason, but another reason that I heard quite often was communication issues—which I call ego management issues. But then I would ask them the most important question: When did you know that the team is not correct? Perhaps more importantly, the emphasis on problem definition prevents development workers from exploring two other, and in our mind, equally legitimate strategies for problem solving, namely: co-evolution and solution mapping. You can answer all these questions by simply applying the same jobs-to-be-done thinking process from above.

A 3-step decision framework for falling in love with the problem

Q:I don’t understand this: “Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.” My problem is high unemployment in my area. I want to create jobs and the solution is job development. Please explain. Notice how the “Innovator’s Bias” sneaked in here. Each of us is trained to be good at certain disciplines, and when confronted with a problem, we automatically reach for our strongest tool. It’s no surprise that my designer came up with a design solution, my developer came up with a technical solution, and my marketer came up with a, yes, you guessed it, marketing solution. Finally, to fall in love with the problem means a commitment to gaining customer empathy, considering a broad range of ideas and experimenting with your customers. Should you feel guilty if you’ve fallen in love with a solution? Of course not, as long as you follow a structured process that allows you to say goodbye to a solution that’s not working, and fall in love with the next one you try! I’ve heard that many times. I think that people don’t say that to me so much anymore, but in the beginning, they used to say it a lot. Sometimes you take your date to meet your friends for the first time and they say, “That person is not for you.”

We spend so much time trying to “miss” failure that we fail to realize that: Failing is a necessary pre-condition for a breakthrough. An awesome organization would be a company that is exceptional, impressive, and inspiring, with great DNA. It will be admired for its achievements, reputation, culture, and values. One that, among other things, retains top talent. It’s a journey of failures building something new that no has built before. We try something and it doesn’t work so we keep trying different things until we find one thing that does work. If you’re afraid to fail, you already failed because you’re not going to try. Albert Einstein used to say that if you haven’t failed, that’s because you haven’t tried anything new before. Michael Jordan said that failing over and over and over again is what made him successful.

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