How can you identify the right problem to solve for your target market?

When building a startup, the customer development methodology by Steve Blank can be a great aid to find a 'repeatable and scalable business model', or in other words, a problem that is valuable enough for a potential customer and has a big enough market for it to be worth solving. Understanding the market through what is termed 'customer discovery' is the first of four steps in this methodology. Through open-ended questions (minus any sales intent) directed at the target market on what their challenges are and how they're currently solving them, startups can identify different problems/size, customer segments, and the like. For qualitative data, Giff Constable's 'Talking to Humans' offers a structured guide to run customer interviews.

Spend as much time as possible talking to customers and potential customers. The more variety in the stakeholders you're able to speak with the better. Most products aren't just widgets, they are drivers of a process change somewhere within a customer's organization. The better you can get a view into that bigger picture impact (or lack of) the better you can understand the actual problems that need to be solved.

The only way to identify is to talk with as much real people from the company as possible. Many many times we are wrong and we are too quick pitching the solution which will make them happy - this is never the case

Once you identified and defined the problem, a great question is: Whose problem is it? How big and serious of a problem is it for them? What is it costing them? Your end user may not be your target audience who needs to address the problem. Your target audience has the resources and the decision making power. It’s important to get out of the building and talk to your target audience. Ask behavioral questions to understand decisions and actions they have taken to address the problem and how that worked for them. Focus on understanding pain points and motivation to solve the problem and avoid theoretical “would you” questions or leading questions about your idea. It’s always about the problem!

One of the most important things is really understanding who your potential customers are. Don't just assume - actually talk to them. Ask them questions like what problems they're facing and how they try to solve it now. You'll learn so much from these conversations. Make sure there's a real need and that people would be willing to pay you to help meet it. Knowing your target audience inside and out will be key to creating something people truly want and building a successful business. It's worth putting in the time upfront for customer research.

Leveraging AI to help create a clear problem statement allows for a collaborative think tank session with a limitless intelligence. If you are bootstrapping, do not have a co-founder, or a mentor who can help you with this process. I would suggest opening a ChatGPT and prompting: "Imagine you are a world-class Accenture consultant and help me define my problem statement based on this idea: (insert an overview of what you are trying to build)" Name the model Accenture Consultant and you have the foundation of world-class business planning capabilities to build from.

To find a problem, you don't need to go out and ask everyone for it, because problems are everywhere. Instead, you need to be a keen observer, an avid thinker, and a problem solver at your core. Always be looking around, reading, learning, networking, and listening. This is not only a process but should be part of who you are. Once you do discover a problem and decide you can create a business around solving that problem, you can start working on a problem statement that will clearly explain an issue or challenge that summarizes what you want to change.

Identify the Pain Point:Clearly articulate the problem or challenge your target audience is facing.Understand the impact of this problem on potential users. Be Specific: Avoid vague or broad statements. Pinpoint the exact issue your product or service aims to solve.Define the problem in a concise and understandable manner. Quantify if Possible:If applicable, use data to quantify the extent of the problem. Numbers can provide a tangible understanding of the issue. Consider Your Unique Approach:Highlight how your startup uniquely addresses the problem. What sets your solution apart from existing alternatives?

Engage in a market validation experiment by using automation to build relationships with future prospects through conversation. "Hi XXX, I am building a potential solution to XXX to make it easier for XXX to achieve XXX. I am looking for honest feedback while in the beta stage of the idea, could I leverage your expertise?" Respecting the expertise of your prospect and informing them the intent at this stage of the idea is not to sell but to validate you are on the right track is advisable. It is the equivalent to a beta test recruiting strategy and people love being seen as an expert!

Define Clear Metrics:Clearly define the metrics that will indicate whether the problem hypothesis is valid. This could include user engagement, satisfaction scores, or other relevant KPIs. Customer Interviews: Conduct in-depth interviews with your target audience to understand their pain points and validate if your assumed problem aligns with their actual needs. Surveys and Questionnaires:Use surveys to gather quantitative data from a larger sample. Ask questions that directly relate to the problem you are addressing. Prototype Testing:Develop a simple prototype or MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to test how users interact with your solution. Collect feedback to validate if your problem hypothesis resonates.

Let the market be your guide here, look for data sources that confirm the pervasiveness of the problem-solution sets you are looking to build. I emphasize the use of job postings to understand what problems the market is trying to solve and how important it is to the market to solve the problem. Right now there is an explosion in AI job postings because the entire market has a problem. ChatGPT caught everyone off guard and now every company must engage in AI initiatives or risk losing ground to more innovative competitors. Use tools like Lean Canvas to quickly assimilate the information required to identify the most important and attractive problems in the market. And create the best solutions to those problems.

The key to achieving problem-solution-fit is to define what will be OUT of scope. Most start-ups make the critical mistake of making too many solutions for too many problems a part of their product. This doesn't only make product development a nightmare, it's also very difficult to market the product because it's hard to define the ideal customer profile. Instead, niche down and solve a very specific set of problems for a highly targeted customer profile. Once you have problem-solution-fit for this niche, expand from there.

Nesse momento é bastante relevante uma análise sobre as formas que o mercado utiliza atualmente para resolver ou lidar com o problema existente. Em alguns casos as solu??es propostas consumem recursos dos clientes e a altera??o de processos necessária para sua ado??o acaba sendo um "mal maior" que os benefícios propostos pela solu??o. Compreender a forma que o interessado lida com o problema, suas dores e seus objetivos de "dentro pra fora" pode ser decisivo no momento de criar ou eleger a melhor solu??o para o problema identificado.

Listening intently to your audience's voice to decode the underlying problems they might not explicitly articulate is an art that you must learn. The right problem to solve is often one that resonates deeply with your audience, offering a solution that significantly improves their lives or addresses a persistent pain point, paving the way for a successful and impactful product or service.

It is important not to get too attached to an idea if the early feedback from the market is that there is no appetite for the solution (at this time). My neighbor in the early 90s purchased an electric car concept from Ford. The design was not eye-catching and the technology did not represent a significant leap over gasoline-powered high-end luxury vehicles. The EV never made it to the mass market and it would take 2+ decades for an automaker (Tesla) to leverage the feedback of the market from previous EV entries to solve the problems the market truly wanted to be solved by an EV automaker. Build-Measure-Learn, it is important that there is a measurement and learning mechanism built into the business from the start.

Steeve Jobs used to say that people don't know what they want until you show them. While getting feedback you must pay extra attention to what people are telling you directly but are expressing it undirectly. Non verbal communication takes place and simply by trying to operate a product or service not as the way It was intended to work or function can give us lot's of insights.

2 options - do things better or do things that should be done but aren’t being done. Doing things better is an opportunity. BUT, To solve for what isn’t being done but SHOULD be done is the sweet-spot and where you will find maximum success.

Em muitos casos n?o é a solu??o proposta em si que vai trazer faturamento para tornar o negócio viável. A depender da solu??o proposta, o nível de engajamento que se conquista do usuário, o grau de aten??o que se ganha em virtude da operacionaliza??o da solu??o podem abrir portas para abordagens complementares que trar?o grandes oportunidades de faturamento sem necessariamente impactar na estrutura de custos existente.

A lot of new businesses jump into things after seeing an idea. The best advice is to Slow down, talk to people, understand the problems, and do your research before spending time and money on something that might not work out

I often use review and rating platforms like trustpilot and review.io and find relevant businesses and filter reviews with 1 star ??

Look at budget and urgency as key indicators of how important the problem is for your target market to solve. If there is little budget and no urgency then this is not the right problem to focus on! Even if you validate that the problem is real for your target market you must ensure that they are willing to spend budget now to fix the problem. This is often a missing step in the customer research stage. Which results in lots of products that are nice to have but that no company buys.

Another thing to consider is that for any business to thrive there will be a huge necessity to endeavor customer acquisition. It's not uncommon to find business offering a commission to acquire sales partners for their products. While developing your solution, or even before that, try to find a competitor on your niche that is willing to have a sales partner for a commission fee on their product... building some sales will give you a flashlight on what kind of features the customer is willing to spend their budget on...