What to Work On

Choosing what to work on is critial to building something great. There are a ton of problems out there to solve. Which one is best for you?

The issue

One of the most common thing that you're told when starting a startup is to listen to the customer and make that the absolute center of the business. And this is absolutely 100% correct. The more customer centric you are, the more value you can provide for people, which is kind of the whole point of building a startup. In my experience building companies this has led to me to think that I should think about nothing else but serving customers for a specific problem.

That caused me to forget the simple fact that while it is an absolute neccesity to serve customers and their needs exceptionally well, I also had a choice in what problem I solved. Something to keep in mind is that startups are a LONG journey. The billion dollar companies you see today take almost a decade to build. So if you decide to build something you should be happy to spend 10 years minimum in that direction. Am I going to be at my best solving something I don't care about? No.

Now the question is okay how do I find something that matters, I can build a good solution to and something I like doing.

I built a framework for that

My Framework

I would break up "what to work on" into 3 parts, the problem, the solution and you. Ideally you want all 3 of these things to line up.

Let's start with the problem. This is entirely an evaluation of if the problem is something that truly matters. Is this a billion dollar problem? Do people hate this problem so much they'll pay lots of money for it to go away?

Second is the solution. Can you build a defensible solution to the problem that is 10x or more better than things that already exist? Long term, will the solution keep improving?

Finally, look at what you like to do. This is your life. I'd highly suggest against building something that you hate doing. Figure out if you like the problem you're solving, the solution you're building and it's worth 10 years of your life. Do you want to be an expert in thing you're doing? If you're building payments, do you really like payments enough to do it for 10 years? If yes, amazing. If not, here's 10 years of your life back

I find that for me a structured approach to evaluating these questions works best so I'll link the framework I use. Duplicate it into notion

Framework -> https://flint-magnolia-a74.notion.site/Framework-for-Picking-What-to-work-on-34cde366745e46c3a79d4b775138d6ed

Other Smart People

There's lots of other smart people who also talk about this. My insights are a result of learning, filtering and applying the things I hear as well as experiencing these things firsthand. You should see what they say too

Paul Graham (What to work on)-> https://www.paulgraham.com/greatwork.html

Lenny (Evaluating problem/product) -> https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-validate-your-b2b-startup