Falling In Love With A Problem

Sep 24, 2024

For technologists, the biggest risk is falling in love with technology.

The moment you start obsessing over a feature and begin building your product from the root of technical capabilities is the moment you lose alignment with creating value for customers.

When you think about your startup as a pure function of technical capabilities and features, you move into the competitive landscape, which causes anxiety, overthinking, and a general fear of competitors. You stop solving real problems for customers and start playing a competitive game against all the other players in the market.

The better alternative to this is falling in love with a problem—understanding a painful problem real people have and working your way back to the technology, not engaging in innovation for the sake of innovation but for the sake of providing a better experience to your customers. This is the only obsession that drives building a meaningful company in the tech space.