The Importance of Validating Problems Before Building Solutions

The Importance of Validating Problems Before Building Solutions

As engineers, we often fall into the trap of thinking that our primary focus should be on coding and building products. However, the truth is that spending time talking to people and validating the problem we're trying to solve can save us months, if not years, of wasted effort. This article explores the concept of finding product-market fit and the importance of validating problems before diving into building solutions.

One of the most compelling examples of the value of problem validation comes from the founding story of Segment. Initially, the team started with various tools for students and professors, as well as an analytics tool. However, they soon realized that what they truly needed was a simple open-source library called "analytics.js" to manage multiple analytics tools in a single platform. This minimal viable product (MVP) turned out to be the key to their success. It's a powerful reminder that building the solution should come after ensuring that you're truly solving a problem.

For technical founding teams, the inclination is often to prioritize coding over everything else. However, this approach can lead to wasted efforts and resources. Instead, the majority of a technical founding team's effort should be focused on ensuring that they're genuinely addressing a problem. Building the solution is the easy part; identifying the problem and validating its existence is where the real work lies.

In hindsight, the founders of Segment realized that if they had spent more time conducting interviews and gathering insights from potential users, they could have saved themselves 18 months of building useless features. Talking to people, even though it may not feel like "real work" to engineers, is an essential step in reducing the risk for any company. It allows you to gain valuable insights, validate assumptions, and ultimately build a product that truly addresses a market need.

The concept of the minimum viable product (MVP) is closely tied to the idea of problem validation. Rather than spending months and months on engineering efforts, a landing page built over a couple of days can often be sufficient to test the waters and validate the problem-solution fit. The key is to find that initial sliver of a problem and dig deeper into it. Once you've identified a genuine problem, building the solution becomes an incredibly rewarding, fun, and challenging endeavor.

However, it's crucial to remember that problem validation is not a one-time activity. It's an ongoing process that should be integrated into the product development lifecycle. Continuously validating the problem ensures that you stay on track and maintain product-market fit.