#4 Fall in Love with The Problem, not The Tech
Back in June 2024, I attended a talk at London Tech Week by Steve Blank, author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. He discussed the future of entrepreneurship and the adoption of generative AI in the startup scene. During the Q&A session, a member of the audience asked Steve about a problem she was facing with her startup. She introduced herself as the CTO of startup <Name> and then explained how her company was struggling to scale their product, adding new features powered by reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, to meet customer needs. She talked about how they’re using the technology to solve the problem and asked for Steve’s advice on how to overcome the scalability problem.
Steve first congratulated her on the tech but emphasised that her startup should not be too focused on using the technology. Instead, it should prioritise solving a real customer problem. In other words, he advised her to fall in love with the problem, not the tech.
I had heard this advice several times before, but this time it really resonated with me. The truth is, I can't even remember what was the problem her startup was trying to solve—all I recall is that it involved AI. And that made perfect sense to me, especially when thinking from the customer's perspective.
As a customer, I don't care how you solve my problem; I only care that you solve it.
You could be developing a tax accounting software that seems boring or dull to others, but if it solves a real business problem and customers are willing to pay for it, then it's a valuable product! It doesn't need to be powered by the latest technologies like Large Language Models (LLMs) to be considered "cool." Sure these technologies can still unlock new capabilities that may seem promising to customers, but they are only valuable if they add real value to their lives.
The main point I want to share with you is this: technology is a means to an end, and that end goal is solving problems. You don't need to design a complex system powered by the "latest tech trends" to impress customers. What you need is to build something that makes customers' lives easier. If it does, they'll gladly pay for it. They don't care how it works, they care that it works.