Product Management: Looking for problems to solve

I've been thinking about what problems to solve.  I think there are many problems to solve all around us.  The trick is recognizing what makes a problem and figuring out how to come up with a better solution.

Here's how I look for problems to solve around me:

Product Management: How to find a right problem

Last time I talked about importance of defining a problem before starting a project.  Today I want to talk about how to find a worthy problem that is right for you.


There are million problems - hence million opportunities - in this world.  World hunger, global warming, Middle East peace, voters' apathy toward politics, health care, ...  the list goes on.  These are all worthy problems.  But they are too big and abstract for most people.


When you look at successful startups in the last couple of decades, there are common patterns in how founders found their problems.  The common pattern is that many started small with solving a problem they had themselves.


Pick a problem that exists in your life.


Another way of saying this is to be your own product's number one customer.  If you are looking to solve a problem for someone else, you are more likely to fail.

Product Management: Define a right problem to solve

One of the most important skills that I've found as product manager is coming up with a right problem to solve.  Problem must be a real problem.  It must be something worth solving.  Something that has real impact to people.  It cannot be too big to solve, but at the same time it cannot be too trivial that no one cares about.

Start with problem definition;
continue to sharpen the focus.

When I look back at my college years, I completely got it backward.  My college buddies and I would get together and start talking about what would be cool to build with the latest technology.  I remember in 1998 working on dating website without really understanding what problem that we were solving.  We had tools to build a site, we knew how, we had servers, so we went ahead and built a site.  Because we knew how, we started building.  And that's how many engineers think about, myself included