Real Problems: If Entrepreneurs Ain’t Doing It, VCs It’s Your Fault.

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.

Culture = Living your own life.

In primary school, I remember my teacher trying to hammer into our heads as hard as she could what culture meant. It was defined as a way of life. Growing up, I’ve come to realize culture is actually a set of rules, often rigid, passed down from generation to generation to get a person to fit into society. The problem is culture divides us. In a world getting smaller and smaller it does put up a lot of barricades. People literally force themselves to live by rules set by some carcass hundreds of years ago. This is not how we do this. This is not how we do that. A common excuse for sticking to the status quo. History is littered with examples of people who broke out of these shackles of societal living only to be ostracized. He/ she is no more “one of us” they say. “You have soiled the family name” they shout. In old Japan, they’d even hand you a sword to end your own life. Some go to the extent of burying people alive with a dead king. There are a lot more examples that are ridiculous to say the least. Societal culture also brings with it loads of superstitions and preconceived notions. The king phrase: “that’s the way it has always been”. Societal culture comes with tremendous baggage so I’m advocating we drop it. Let us pick up a set of rules created for us by us. Rules that let us live our lives free from societal baggage. In essence, culture becomes living your own life. What has helped you adapt today will not necessary work tomorrow because the landscape of life changes. Don’t spend your life engaging in rituals you do not care for. Life is short. Shorter still when a great portion you might have lived has been dictated by someone else. By killing societal culture, collaborations happen. Borders are no more. Innovation flourishes. People of different races and walks of life mix and the creative train becomes unstoppable. Now let’s look at companies. A company with hundreds of staff is still seen as one person. The CEO. There’s a reason why company cultures can’t be adopted in other companies. They’re not individualized. They’re do not resonate with the core values of the CEO. Unfortunately for companies, they’re a reflection of the person leading. If the CEO has no thirst for looking for the next big thing, it reflects. If the CEO cares less about the customer, it reflects. I have found that the CEOs who are the most successful have always possessed the values the company is known for. CEO believes in excellent customer service; the company believes in excellent customer service. The CEO believes in moving fast; company believes in moving fast. Often great companies that fail never hire someone who possesses the same internal culture/ values as the leader who made it successful. The greatest companies have always found people who have helped the company culture evolve as new people take the helm. People that are willing to standout like sore thumbs from the status quo. People who know that the market is bored to the teeth with the likes that refuse evolution.These people often posses the same values or beliefs held by their predecessors. They drop what doesn’t work and go with what works for them cause they know that they are their company and their company is them. Live life by your own rules and life will reward you. Fortune always favours the bold.