How to find the right problem that is worth working on if I don’t have one?
Alexey Shashkov
6 replies
I've been in a meeting with Michael Sibel (YC CEO) @mwseibel today, organized by the ITMO – University from St. Petersburg.
It was a Q&A session, and I got a chance to ask him a question.
I asked a simple question. How to find the right problem that is worth working on?
He answered me something like:
1. Start working on any problem that seems worth working on for you. Ideally, on your problem.
2. If you don't have your problem, join someone who does. Just work on something you find interesting.
3. Accept the fact that you will constantly fail. There will be more failures than successes.
4. If you take those failures as learnings rather than failures, you'll eventually stumble upon the right problem worth working on and build the right solution. It's going to take years.
5. The fun and joyful days in a founder's job are rare. Mostly it's monotonous work and constant fails. Keep going.Replies
Graeme O’Connor@iamgoconnor
Great advice. Thanks for sharing. It's what's called founder-market fit and I think many startups end up not having it, either because they start before figuring out what they want to really work on (over several years, not just a few months) or they pivot to follow market demand and end up working on something that they are less passionate about (but where there is real demand). It's incredibly hard to get right, and that's just for the "problem" side!
Share
Thanks for sharing Alexy.
"Accept the fact that you will constantly fail."
A great reminder for impatient people. Thank you for sharing.