The problem validation framework helps anyone understand what is the growth potential of a given problem and why anyone should go after that problem space. This framework is a simple rule of thumb that will help you prioritize your resources and focus. It is clear that you and your organization can’t solve all the problems and chase all the ideas in the world - this framework will help you decide if the problem space you are going after is worth your team time and resources.

Who could use this

This tool can be very useful for different entities in different points of time:

• For an investor that is selecting a startup to invest in
• An entrepreneur deciding what idea he/she should pursue
• A corporate whenever selecting a problem to solve and tackle

As you can imagine the applicability of this tool is vast, it will depend where you are in your journey, but by and large it will help you decide where you should focus and why you should go after a certain problem space or not at all.

Framework explanation

A problem can be deconstructed in multiple variables that could be assessed separately. By doing that you will be able to better understand the problem space.

Below you will find the main components of a problem:

• Popularity
• Growth
• Frequency
• Urgency
• Costs
• Regulatory environment

One of the first things you want to understand is how many users have that problem? Ideally you are looking for a very popular problem with millions of users. Generally speaking the more the better.

It does help if you are tackling a growing problem space and with a good probability of reaching more users as that problem space evolves.

You should prioritise problems that are very frequent and happen, preferably on a daily basis, instead of something that only happens once a year.

The urgency of the problem is also very important as we should aim to solve problems that are urgent for the user. Something that the user needs to solve now will be considered more urgent, and as a result you should prioritise this problem space.

If the problem space is considered expensive for the user that could be a great opportunity for someone solving that problem. We should therefore prioritise costly problems space.

Often changes in regulation create a new and interesting problem space that will eventually impact a lot of users and they could grow over time. A problem space that results from a change in regulation could be interesting to explore.

Slide

Here you will find a slide example. Soon we will implement a feature for anyone to download all the tools that we are building.