In the University at Buffalo’s Cultivator program, we believe that a startup can increase its chances of success by really understanding the problem they are trying to solve before building the next great solution.
In the story, “Successful startups focus on market before solution,” UB’s Rick Gardner illustrated how startups tend to be solution-oriented in their approach, which is a major contributing factor to high startup failure rates. Nearly a year on from that article, let’s revisit the solution-first mindset by demonstrating how we help teams move past it in Cultivator.
Nearly every team that gets into Cultivator tells us on day one that there’s just one thing holding them back from getting their business to the next level. For some companies that’s raising awareness, so they want to pour money into marketing. Others talk about prototyping to get to manufacturing. We’ve had teams tell us that they just need to build a facility to move their business forward. No matter what their one thing is, we often respond by asking, “Would you be willing to slow down now so you can speed up later?”
We seek founders who understand and vet their own assumptions and biases. How do you do that? Try asking yourself questions like these:
- If you’re solving a problem for people like you, are you the median or the outlier?
- How do you know what you claim is true? Do you have proof points outside of your immediate circle of friends and family?
- When you imagine several ways the problem could play out, which actually does? For who?
- Which part of the problem is the most important? Again, for who?
- How much progress on the problem is enough to make the customer buy? How much would delight them?
- Do you really know who the decision-maker is?
From there you can start to grasp the depth of the problem and your link to it.
Next write down your assumptions. To organize your ideas and quickly get to a draft that invites others to help, try writing bulleted answers to the first four of Bill Aulet’s big questions from “Disciplined Entrepreneurship:”
- Who is your customer?
- What can you do for your customer?
- How does your customer acquire your product? Don’t just think about this in terms of an e-commerce site or a tangible good that will be bought at a store. How do they even realize they have the problem you address? How do they find you? Try to be as specific as possible.
- How do you make money off your product? Think about this from your customer’s viewpoint. How much value are they receiving? How do they think about paying for that value?
They’re just assumptions. That’s OK. Score each assumption with two questions:
- Evidence: How confident are you? (1: It’s a guess; 5: 4 of 5 people asked about the problem would agree)
- Impact: What if I’m wrong? (1: No one notices; 5: It’s a showstopper)
Begin on the bullets with showstopper impact where you’re just guessing, then work outward. Come up with experiments that could get you truth-on-the-ground for how a group of people experience the problem today and help you tell their story as though you were walking in their shoes.
You may want a room full of founders and coaches to brainstorm and refine experiments with you until you grow a muscle. Conduct the fewest number of activities you can to yield evidence on the most assumptions. As you do this, remember that you’re trying to understand your customer’s problem. You aren’t trying to find justifications for your solution. And remember not to out-guess your customers; just watch and ask questions. Save your brilliance for an elegant solution later.
Do this work yourself, rather than delegating it, and keep doing it even after you’ve launched your solution. Your customers’ problems live a long time. In fact, there are very few new problems. Solutions will come and go, but you can keep finding new ways to solve the same problems and retain your customers for years. It all begins with putting on your customers’ shoes.
Need hands-on help to guide your early-stage startup to success? Get up to $100,000 and nine months of mentorship to validate your market potential through Cultivator: buffalo.edu/cultivator