Falling in love with problems
I have had a little over a decade of experience with entrepreneurship, so getting close to my 10,000 hours and one thing I have learnt is falling in love with problems.
As a society the outcomes that we praise, seek and validate are solutions. We like the solutions that win, we love big outcomes. So most people when chasing success are chasing ideas for a solution that can capture the world.
I have found the opposite is required in order to build something. In order to create something wonderfully unique we must fall in love with the problem. On the surface, this sounds simple as losing weight, eat healthy and exercise, but the reality is that falling in love with problem and staying in love with the problem is extremely hard.
Google was built because Larry and Sergey fell in love with a problem of finding information online and google’s downfall will be that they are defending a solution. The same can be said about the early days of AirBnB, Facebook and many others.
Problems persist while solutions can change. Our core problems as humans of staying connected, needing food, housing, a way to transact with other humans, our wanderlust remains the same - the solutions change. Even as businesses the core problems of hiring, growing revenues, reducing costs, keeping people happy, moving information fast within the business etc remain the same - solutions change.
It is easier to sell a problem, than a solution. Great sales people don’t pitch you a set of features, they empathize with the problem, they make the buyer feel that their problem is well understood, and demonstrate their deep understanding of the problem. Great brands follow the same messaging at its core. Apple’s famous “Think Different” ad, didn’t offer a solution, but empathized with lots of people who felt misunderstood. Even the famous apple speech of launching on i-phone goes in depth about the problems of qwerty keyboards on phone and lack of internet navigation - it made people feel the problem before presenting any solution.
Falling in love with a problem is hard because the mind wants to jump to a solution and then one anchors themselves to the solution.
This post is a reminder to me that we should fall in love with problems more often. In the famous words of Love Actually “If you look, love problems are all around us”
