Before You Build Your Startup, Answer These 7 Questions
Starting a company today has never been easier. You can create a website in a day. You can build an app with AI. You can launch a social media page in minutes. But there is one thing technology cannot guarantee: That you are solving the right problem.
At RSM, we are building around a simple approach: Research → Software → Marketing
Before building a product, we believe founders should first understand the problem. If you're thinking about starting a business, here are seven questions worth answering before writing your first line of code.
1. What problem are you actually solving?
Don't start with: "I want to build an AI app."
Start with: "What problem does this solve?"
A technology is not a business. A problem worth solving can become one.
2. Who has this problem?
Be specific. "Everyone" is usually not your customer.
Find the exact group of people who experience the problem. Talk to them. Observe them. Understand how they currently solve it.
3. How are they solving it today?
This is one of the most important questions. If people already have a way to solve the problem, understand it. Are they using WhatsApp? Excel? Phone calls? Manual work? Another software? Or simply tolerating the problem? The current solution tells you a lot about the opportunity.
4. How painful is the problem?
Not every problem deserves a startup. Some problems are annoying. Some are expensive. Some waste hours every week. Some cause businesses to lose customers or money. The bigger the impact, the stronger the reason to solve it.
5. Will someone pay for the solution?
People saying: "That's a great idea!" doesn't necessarily mean they will become customers.
Try to understand whether your solution creates enough value for someone to actually pay for it. Interest is not the same as demand.
6. Can you test the idea without building everything?
This is where many founders make a mistake. They spend months building an application before finding out whether people actually want it. Start smaller. Talk to potential customers. Create a prototype. Show the concept. Run a small experiment. Try to get your first customer before building the perfect product.
7. Why should your solution exist?
If ten companies already solve the same problem, why would someone choose you? Your advantage could be:
- Better experience
- Lower cost
- Faster service
- Better technology
- Better distribution
- Better understanding of a specific market
- A completely different approach
You need to know your reason.
The biggest mistake?
Many first-time founders follow this path:
Idea → App → Launch → Search for customers
A better approach can be:
Problem → Research → Customer → Validation → MVP → Launch
That's one of the principles we're trying to build into RSM. We don't want to build software just because we can. We want to understand what is worth building first.
One final thought for new founders
You don't need to have everything figured out before starting. You don't need a perfect business plan. You don't need a huge team. You don't even need to build the complete product immediately.
But you should be willing to ask better questions before making expensive decisions. That's where research becomes powerful.
At RSM, our goal is to explore problems, research opportunities, build useful technology and help turn validated ideas into real products and businesses. This is just the beginning. And through this blog, I'll be sharing what we're learning along the way.
If you're building something, don't just ask "What should I build?"
Ask "What is worth building?"