Kevin F. Adler

This weekend, Mark Zuckerburg challenged attendees at YC’s Startup School to solve a problem.

As Mark indicated, what problem we select is less important than whether we are convinced that the problem needs solving and whether we are passionate enough to dedicate “at least the next five years” toward trying to solve it. 

The idea of spending five years solving a problem is a refreshing departure from how most of us conceptualize our time. Even if we spent five years on one problem, we tend to think of our time as spent “working at X company” or “running Y startup” rather than addressing a real problem, much less actually solving a problem. [example]

Mark helped me realize that there is a difference between trying to build a company and trying to solve a problem. 

If we are trying to solve a problem, we will make many mistakes and probably not succeed.

If we are trying to build a company, we will make many mistakes and probably not succeed, and even if we do “succeed” we probably will not really succeed, as we almost certainly did not solve an actual problem, unless our problem was how to build an entity to do donuts in the Wal-Mart parking lot, or whatever else it is that our company actually does.

Why not start by thinking about building a company as secondary and directly contingent on solving an actual problem? Could we start by solving a problem, and then build a company only if/when it makes sense for solving that problem even better?

This will be our approach for Alumn.us.

After 2.6 decades of experience, I have learned that it’s better to direct every ounce of our brain power toward figuring out how to solve a problem rather than how to build a company that may or may not actually solve a problem, but will almost undoubtedly create headaches and, if really ambitious, total busts (see Silicon Valley, cerca 2000).

Let’s say that we are focused on solving an actual problem. Awesome. After months of toiling, let’s say that cache of Einstein between our ears loads a 404 error message and we don’t know what to do next. Or maybe we know exactly what to do, but know we can’t do it ourselves.

So we bring another human being to our party as

1. an advisor (paid in thank you’s)
2. an employee (paid in peanuts, or if they have a nut allergy, another food)
3. a co-founder (paid in strips of paper with a % on it. But really, they pay us, because they are crazy enough to believe that we may actually be able to solve a problem and they want to help us do it).

Now we have our crazy sidekick(s)*, and we ask ourselves and this new person (if they are still around) what assumptions we have made about how we will solve a problem.

And we figure out how to test those assumptions.

BTW, go read The Lean Startup if you haven’t already. Don’t just buy it so Eric Ries can write “Kevin, Welcome to the Valley!” cause that would be a waste of $15.40 and $5,000 worth of deals on AppSumo.

Now that we know exactly how to test our assumptions, we set-up a few experiments and surveys. A master’s degree in Sociology from Cambridge can definitely come in handy here (trust me). We put forward our hypothesis, and we’re wrong.

We iterate, and we’re wrong again.

We become demotivated, waste a ridiculous amount of time tinkering with our Facebook fan page which has two fans (ourselves and the crazy sidekick mentioned above), and realize that those faulty tests were probably a better use of our time and society’s time.

So we experiment.

And experiment again.

And experiment some more.

At this point, we realize that setting up a few pilot cases might make sense. We take whatever lessons we learned from our experiments, and start doing.

Sustainability will be key someday, so we start thinking about how we might make a buck in the future directly or indirectly from the people whose problems are being solved by us. FYI, this will be especially challenging if we are running nonprofits.

Now we have an initial revenue model. 

And maybe, just maybe, we are at the point where we start building a company to solve a problem that we cannot solve as effectively if we were “just” solving a problem.

I like to reflect on the fact that Mark Zuckerburg never intended to start Facebook the company. He intended to make online more social. He did this, and then built a company to make online even more social than before.

So we must ask ourselves: do we intend to start a company or to solve a problem?

My bet is on the crazy ones solving problems.

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*The “(s)” in sidekick(s) stands for heaven forbid.