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Before you pick a problem

Which race are you in?

Two people can pick the same problem and still need completely different plans, because they're running different races. None of them is better than the others. Entering the wrong one is what gets expensive. Eight questions, about two minutes.

The questions

Answer for the life you have

Answer for the week you have now. The first four are about what you want, the last four about what your week allows.

    The three races

    The side product

    You have a job or a business. You want something small, profitable, and low maintenance. Your constraints are time and energy, and your enemy is complexity. That means narrow problems, small audiences you already belong to, and products that can run mostly without you.

    The new venture

    You want this to become your main thing. Your constraints are runway, how long you can afford to keep going, and how fast you learn. Your enemy is spending too long on a dead idea. So you want problems with room to grow, and to optimize for how fast you can find out the truth.

    The credibility play

    The product's real job is to demonstrate what you can do, feed your consulting or career, and build an audience. Revenue is a bonus. Your enemy is shipping something forgettable, so the problems worth picking are the ones where the solution itself is worth talking about.

    The expensive mistake

    The classic one is picking a venture-sized problem while living a side-product life, then wondering why you're exhausted and half finished. So I fit the problem to the race, and the race to the week I really have.

    And some building isn't a race at all. Making things purely for the joy of it is a hobby, or art, and both are fine. The book is about the other kind, the kind that needs strangers to want it.

    Next: run your candidate problems through the five-question filter, then check the numbers with the yeses calculator.

    From chapter 2, "Pick your race".