On a random day you see a problem around you. It might be something in your house or something in your neighborhood store, or something on your road to school or work. You also see that a lot of people are getting affected by the problem and you decide to solve it. Ideas can even come from discussing a challenge someone else is facing like your family, your friends, your colleagues at work, your neighbors, etc.

You are a person with an entrepreneurial mindset decide to solve the problem. So what is the first thing you will do? Ask yourself. Will you start thinking of a designing a solution to the challenge? You are not an engineer yourself, so will you reach out to the first engineer who comes to mind and talk to him/her? NO.

The first thing to do in such a case is to validate your problem statement. You need to know if this is a problem that people in your locality or people of a specific demographic are facing or is it a problem that a large number of people are facing. So where do you start then? Ask people around you. Gauge their response. Ask people from different demographics, call your friends or family from a different city or state even country and see if they relate to your problem statement. See if there is a similar solution out there and what is their value proposition.

Here are some of the challenges we see with the start-up founders we interact with:

1. They don’t make sure that the product they are building adds significant value to your target audience’s life. At one point in time you will want your target audience to buy the service/product you are trying to sell and if they are not willing to pay for it or to pay as much as you expect such that you are profitable then it defeats the purpose of making the product
2. They want to build a me-too product. Someone else is already making the product and they expect to sell the product at a cheaper price and they expect to win their audience. This will work for them but not forever. At one point in time when they try and increase their price they will eventually loose their client base
3. They see a product sold outside the country and will want to customize it such that it works for their target audience in another country. Such products run a high risk of NOT being accepted in the intended market place. If a product is successful in one country doesn’t mean it is going to be accepted with the same enthusiasm in a different country.

In conclusion, please remember the following points:

• Validate your idea
• Make sure you have a saleable product and that people will buy the product at the price you want it to be sold at
• Don’t build a me-too product unless you know you are adding significant value to the product that is already made.

This is the second article of a series of articles that we are publishing. If you have just logged in please refer to the previous article here.