I always wanted to make something that affected tons of people. As a programmer, this naturally led me to starting a company and reading the canon of startup advice. Reading successful entrepreneurs such as Paul Graham, Marc Andreesen, along with standard business books have been essential to learning the context and strategy to build a successful company. Yet one central adage always sounded strange, you must solve a problem. Instead, this should be replaced by you must capture a desire strong enough for people to take action to use your product. So many founders think “I have to solve a problem to attract users” which kills incredible ideas. I think it is important to think outside of the box to create the next generation of tech.

Think of your favorite products. What problem was your laptop built to solve? Or your phone? Or your favorite shirt? Your favorite blockchain (Ethereum)?

To achieve the coveted product-market-fit you are told you have to solve a problem. Every investor will ask you for the problem you solve. If you can’t articulate it, few will believe you can reach product-market fit. Why does everyone believe you must solve a problem?

1. Every successful company has solved a problem
2. Your first two pitch deck slides have to be about the Problem and Solution slides

Let’s start with some Popperian philosophy of science! Karl Popper is credited with the criterion of falsifiability, separating pseudoscience science from real science. He noted psychoanalysis and astrology can explain anything — you can’t test whether astrology or psychoanlysis are true, because you can always invent a sensible explanation for anything via planets or the unconscious. So there’s nothing that can happen that can disprove astrology or psychoanalysis. I like much of astrology and psychoanlysis; critiquing them is not the point here– the point is that just as anything can be explained by planets or any behavior can be explained by the unconscious mind, any product can be seen as “solving a problem.”  Because it’s a tautology that something solves a problem. Everything useful can be described as solving a problem, but should it be described as such?

Let’s go through some examples of solutions that illustrate how silly it is to apply problem-solution tautology is. In increasing order of absurdity

1. Your laptop solves the problem of x (it can solve many problems and do many fun things. people buy it for all sorts of reasons. not to solve one problem)
2. Tiktok solves the problem of not having enough videos to procrastinate doing something useful (it somewhat solves the problem of not being entertained enough, but is that why you scroll it? No, you scroll it because it’s addictive.).
3. Your favorite shirt solves the problem of not wanting everyone to see your nipples (honestly i can’t find a serious problem this solves. What problem does your favorite shirt solve?)

Ultimately, everything can be phrased in terms of solving a problem, but why should it be? A customer is not using their favorite shirt or watching TikTok to solve their problems. So why should we be telling entrepreneurs to only build products that solve problems?

Building products should be creative. Only being able to solve problems limits founders’ creativity. It would be cool if pitch decks and our industry didn’t constantly tell founders they have to have a single problem and solution. Because a lot of the best and most successful products are really hard to fit into a single problem, if even any problem at all. It’s not about solving problems – it’s about building something people are genuinely motivated to use.