Everyone has them. VCs want you to solve them. But just what are real problems? World hunger? Meteor showers? World peace? The Harlem Shake(youtube trend)? Real problems are the things you deem them to be. I understand why a lot of VCs are beginning to make this proclamation but they must also remember that this trend of unreal problem solving is part of the pie they have brought to the table. Take for instance a service released becomes so successful beyond measure it begins a trend. Everybody wants to become the “next …” and VCs too only want to fund the “next …”. When these investments fail, they begin to call on entrepreneurs to solve real problems and the cycle continues.
Real problems are what you’d like them to be. If my cereal can’t stay crunchy for longer than a minute and gets all soggy, that’s a real problem for me.I’ll be glad if someone invented cereal that would stay crunch for hours. Problems might be real to some and those problems nonexistent to another.Take my cereal problem for example. The inventions that we use to this present day were problems the inventors knew they had and they knew no one would probably be as passionate about solving it. It’s pretty easy to look at a person’s idea, throw your hands in the air, say it’s not a real problem, and dismiss it. If everyone did that, we would still be using carriages, candles, there would be no electronic devices, people would still be hired to paddle ships, and slavery will be rampant. So how will investors help real problems get solved? Here’s what I propose.
Don’t have a predefined scope of what real problems are: Investors seem to have gridlocked their minds on what real problems are so much as when real investment opportunities come, they pass them up. Bad bad for business. This way, more entrpreneurs will settle for “me too” products. You’re out fishing for trouts and refuse to accept the sardines that come your way(I’m getting awesome at fish analogy 🙂 ).
Look past the trends: get off the next carbon copy bandwagon and keep your ears to the ground. Many people are solving loads of problems they have and are not on the radar but are enjoying the fruits of invention. Seek them out. Crowd funding is your smoke signal.
Demand entrepreneurs solve the problem 50% better than what’s on the market: Hell if you don’t want to get off the “next…” bandwagon, demand the people you’re funding do the job 50 percent better than their competitors. When you have just another copycat product company in your portfolio, you get a bunch of stressed out employees who are constantly made to copy. We all know how grumpy employees are bad for business.
Make sure these problems make the entrepreneurs want to take over the galaxy just to solve it: If it’s not personal then you’re going to get something half arsed. Yeah the entrepreneur can be hardworking but if it’s not personal affair, innovation will not come. If he/ she wants a computer on every desk, better make sure it’s because he/she is disgusted with the amount of work involved with paper so much that when he speaks about it Darth Vader gets cold feet. It just has to be personal.
Easy on the greed: We’re past the Gordon Gekko era. Many entrepreneurs want to have you on board but that Eau de Greed scent is really off putting. The problems you fund require time. That luxury car you’re driving didn’t come in 2 years. It took years of fine tuning. Don’t haggle people into going public or a sale when they’re not ready cause you want to pad your net worth. You were brought on board to help. Bloody help or leave. Whoever comes up with a system to curate the venture capitalist greed would have solved a problem many entrepreneurs face.
Mental Famous 