Is domain-expertise, a blessing or a curse?

I interact with Founders of different hues on a regular basis. Some have worked in the same field for a few years and now believe that there is an unsolved problem in that area which they can focus on. Even Investors give a positive weightage for founders having some relevant experience.

We have a great example of how domain expertise helped a founder build a successful company in FreshWorks (earlier known as FreshDesk). An excerpt from the Founder Girish's blog in 2011 reads, quote "For the last 9 years I was fortunate to be an employee of Zoho Corporation (was called AdventNet when I joined in 2001 as a PreSales Engineer) and in my last role I was VP of Product Management at the ManageEngine division of Zoho Corp. I had a great team and the satisfaction of having built several successful products under the ManageEngine brand. I have been building on-premise helpdesk systems since 2004. In fact I have experience with an ITIL helpdesk, a customer support helpdesk and a facilities helpdesk and know a lot about these markets. In addition to this I had a ringside view to all the action in cloud computing happening in Zoho". Unquote. To read the entire blog post, click here.

At the same time, I have seen and read about many successful founders who had no prior experience in that particular domain setting out to build killer apps.

For example, if you believed that Whatsapp was designed as a messenger ab initio and that the founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton were experts in messenging, please read this article.

Likewise, the founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were not from the Hotel industry. Quote "Without employment, they were having trouble paying their rent and were looking for a way to earn some extra cash.They noticed that all hotel rooms in the city were booked, as the local Industrial Design conference attracted a lot of visitors" Unquote. Read the entire story of the origin, evolution and growth of Airbnb.

We have so far seen success stories of Founders with and without domain expertise.

But there is a huge crop of Founders who having worked in a field for a couple of years, consider themselves as domain experts and proceed to start their venture merely on that 'strength'. After a few years of struggle, they realize that either the problem has been already solved by somebody else or that the problem is so trivial that nobody is willing to pay to solve it.

Further, the 'domain expertise' tag has often rendered Founders, even those with significant domain knowledge, ignorant about the customers and the intentsity of the problem and they continue to believe that if they build the product customers will automatically come. Nothing is far from the reality than that. If you closely read Girish's blog you will find that in addition to building help desk products, he "knew a lot about these markets" and that added significant value to his domain knowledge.

Founders whose main strength is their domain expertise also tend to suffer from the classic "Missing the woods for the tree" syndrome that they fail to see the larger picture of business, that goes beyond the domain knowledge.

So from your experience, do you believe 'domain expertise' is inherently required for starting a venture and is it sufficient for success?

Awaiting your response.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Author is the Principal Consultant of Idea To IPO Growth Consultants