Understanding problems is more important than designing solutions

Entrepreneurs start their journey filled with ideas and energy, ready to tackle any problem that comes your way. This gives them a bias toward building their great ideas, however before diving headfirst into finding solutions, it is crucial to take the time to fully understand the problem at hand.

In 2014 I founded a company called Subvise. Our goal was to build an AI platform that could track chemicals for companies, helping them to stay compliant with regulations and stay informed about any changes in the chemicals they use. We poured our hearts and souls into the project, and ultimately we were able to build a platform that worked very well. However, despite its technical capabilities, we quickly realized that our platform wasn't being adopted by as many companies as we had hoped. As it turns out, we had not spent enough time understanding the problems from the customer perspective. The platform let companies put in a list of chemicals they used and get automated updates and alerts, but most big companies had people doing this job manually, and most small companies didn't know they needed something like this. 

Many entrepreneurs make this mistake of jumping straight into finding solutions without fully understanding the problem they are trying to solve. They may have a great idea for a product or service, but without a thorough understanding of the problem it aims to solve, it is unlikely to be successful. This is because solutions that are not rooted in a deep understanding of the problem are often incomplete, ineffective, or even irrelevant.

On the other hand, entrepreneurs who take the time to understand the problem from multiple perspectives and gather as much information as possible before finding solutions, are more likely to develop effective and innovative solutions. This is because they have a deep understanding of the problem and all the nuances that come with it. Additionally, by gathering data and insights from various sources, entrepreneurs can identify key pain points and unmet needs of their target customers, which can help to increase the chances of success.

With Subvise, we knew that companies with hundreds of chemicals had trouble tracking the ever changing regulatory status of the chemicals. That was a problem, but a company is not like a person. We didn't take the time to ask who at the company had that problem, how difficult the problem was, why they had that problem, and how much budget they had to solve it. The problem Subvise was specially designed to solve was the problem of alerts - knowing when information about a chemical had changed. But it turned out that the people who had the problem were generally not people who controlled budgets, and their bosses who did have budget generally didn't understand the complexity of the problem we were trying to solve, so they just let their employees address it. This led to a very difficult sales process, and we ended up selling the company to a competitor in 2015.

Spending more time understanding problems also helps entrepreneurs to be more creative in their approach to finding solutions. When entrepreneurs fully understand a problem, they are better equipped to think outside the box and come up with creative and unexpected solutions. This can give a startup a significant advantage over its competitors. If I could turn back time and startup Subvise over again, I would have spent much more time understanding the problems that the bosses who controlled budgets saw, and how much their problems were costing them, before even starting to design a solution. 

A problem-based approach is counter-intuitive, but critical to the success of a new venture.