He threw half a dozen In one room, entrepreneurs can come up with a thousand business ideas with a whiteboard, and in a few hours. It’s the nature of entrepreneurship. Our brains are wired to follow our eyes. What could be better And How to turn a gap in the market into an opportunity. In other words: ideas are cheap, and nothing can be improved because it’s so amazing. However, not all problems can be solved.
There are two common problems with the problem slide. Some founders are tempted to get into the weeds on this slide, explaining the competitive landscape, market size, customer segments, value proposition, and more. I understand the challenge – the formulation of the problem affects many aspects of the business – but this is not the time or place.
It’s another common issue I see with pitch floors. Absence Problem slide. This happens especially often with founders who believe that their solution and product slides are so good that the problem itself is obvious and the slide that talks about it is overkill. That is wrong. While the problem is universally understood, it’s important to see how a founder frames it. There are some beautiful ways to do that. Let’s talk about them.
What is the problem?
Being able to clearly articulate the problem is an important first step in explaining why people are looking for a solution. Briefly and clearly explaining what the problem is can be incredibly difficult for some companies, while others have a much simpler approach to problem definition.
A few examples:
Now, we can argue about the size of the market, the customer segment and the perception of each of the problems, but all of the above are real problems that companies are working to solve.
