Loving the Problem

There are as many ways to steer a growing company as there are books on success and management. Some emphasize people, others finance, markets, or intellectual property. Customer centric or product led, strong operators versus strong visionaries, bulletproof technology, moats, margins, and much more. It’s all good, and it’s all kinda true.

To my mind, the most enduring approach, the one that generates the most luck, is simply to be in service of The Problem: the hole in the world you are pursuing. It is at once a humbling act of respect, obsession, and dare I say it, love. If you can fall in love with the problem you’re trying to solve, you’ll be hard to beat. Everything else flows from this: the solutions you build, the people who choose to join you, the policies you set and the clients who elevate you most in the early days. All of it follows in the shadow of the problem.

The problem may reveal itself in awkward lurches, but it won't lie to you. The problem may not be easy to solve, but it will be equally cruel to your competition. Love the problem more than anyone else, and you’ll become its expert; mastery will follow even when you are still small.

It's fun to try and spot this when meeting leaders of interesting companies; the ones that are gaining traction and becoming hard to ignore. If you listen carefully, they often don’t spend much time talking about themselves, their approach, or even their solution. Instead, they naturally guide the conversation back to the problem: why it exists, what it costs, why it matters, what still eludes them, and all the nuances in between. It’s what they love talking about most.

Those companies have a way of always showing up, always being ready to engage, and often punching above their weight.