From Idea to Sustainable Enterprise · 2 of 10The Enterprise Beneath the Idea
The First Product of a Startup Should Be a Better Question
Why premature solutions create activity before an enterprise has established what problem it is actually equipped to solve.
A founder has an idea for a digital platform.
It will connect people who need support with professionals who can provide it. The platform will include profiles, booking, messaging, recommendations and an AI assistant.
The founder researches developers, chooses a name and begins imagining the launch.
They are making progress.
But they have not yet spoken in depth with the people expected to use the platform.
They do not know how those people currently find support, what has prevented them from using existing services or whether another platform is what they want. They have not established whether the principal problem is discovery, affordability, trust, accessibility, time, confidence or the quality of the available support.
They have begun building an answer.
The question remains unfinished.
This happens across many kinds of enterprise.
A creative practitioner develops a programme before learning why people stopped attending similar programmes.
A consultant writes a service package before understanding how potential clients describe the difficulty.
A community organisation prepares a funding application before establishing whether its proposed intervention reflects local priorities.
A product founder commissions a prototype before discovering what people currently use instead.
The venture appears active because visible work is taking place.
But activity is not the same as learning.
The first product of a startup should be a better question.
Solutions are easier to imagine than problems are to understand
Solutions are attractive because they can be seen.
A founder can name them, design them, price them and explain how they will work. A solution creates the emotional experience of moving forward.
Problems are less cooperative.
They change depending on who experiences them. What appears to be one problem may be several connected problems. The visible difficulty may be produced by an underlying system that the founder has not yet investigated.
People may also disagree about what the problem is.
An organisation sees low attendance and concludes that its marketing needs improvement.
A participant sees an event that was not designed with them in mind.
A funder sees insufficient engagement.
A local partner sees a history of organisations arriving, collecting information and disappearing.
Each interpretation suggests a different response.
More promotion may increase awareness without addressing trust. A redesigned event may improve relevance without solving cost or transport barriers. A new partnership may help—but only if the relationship redistributes influence rather than supplying access to a convenient audience.
The founder cannot discover the appropriate response until the problem has been examined from more than one position.
A problem statement is not proof
Business-development exercises often ask founders to complete a sentence:
People need a better way to…
The resulting statement may sound plausible. It may even be true.
But writing a confident sentence does not turn an assumption into evidence.
A founder might state:
Independent artists need an AI platform to market their work.
This statement contains several untested claims.
Do independent artists identify marketing as their most important problem?
Is the difficulty a lack of tools—or a lack of time, confidence, money, strategy, evidence or access to appropriate networks?
Are artists already using AI tools?
If they are, what remains unresolved?
Would another platform reduce their workload or create an additional system to manage?
Could the proposed technology introduce concerns about copyright, artistic identity, data use or pressure to produce more content?
A useful problem statement should organise an enquiry.
It should not bring that enquiry to a premature end.
The statement might therefore become:
Some independent artists struggle to create a consistent public presence while protecting the time, identity and relationships required for their creative practice. We need to understand which parts of this difficulty are strategic, practical, financial, cultural and technological before deciding what form of support would be useful.
This version is less suitable for a pitch.
It is much more useful for research.
It identifies a group and a situation without pretending that the solution is already known. It makes the founder’s uncertainty visible. It also allows for the possibility that different artists will need different responses.
The stated problem may not be the experienced problem
People do not always describe a problem in the language an organisation expects.
A prospective client may say that a service is too expensive.
The organisation may conclude that it needs a lower price.
But “too expensive” can mean several things:
The person cannot afford the service.
The benefits are unclear.
The offer appears too risky.
The timing is wrong.
The person does not trust the provider.
The service includes more than they need.
They cannot justify the purchase to another decision-maker.
A previous disappointing experience has made them cautious.
The process of buying feels difficult.
The offer does not appear designed for someone like them.
Reducing the price would address only one of these possibilities.
It could even create another problem if the lower price made the work financially unsustainable or reduced confidence in its quality.
Similarly, when someone says that they need “more customers,” the deeper difficulty may concern retention, positioning, referrals, pricing or an offer that is too broad to be understood.
When a community organisation says that it needs “better engagement,” the real issue may be institutional distrust, inconvenient scheduling, inaccessible venues or consultation that gives participants no meaningful influence.
The first description of a problem should be treated as an entry point.
The task is not to reinterpret people’s experiences until they fit the founder’s preferred solution. It is to understand what different descriptions reveal.
Founders often inherit problems from the language around them
Not every business problem begins with direct observation.
Some are inherited.
A founder attends a webinar, reads an industry report or follows discussions on social media. Certain terms begin to appear repeatedly:
Productivity.
Scaling.
Engagement.
Digital transformation.
Innovation.
Personal branding.
AI readiness.
These terms can identify real developments. They can also become problems that organisations believe they possess because the language is widespread.
A small creative business may be told that it has an automation problem when its more immediate need is a clear offer.
A community project may believe it needs a new digital platform when its participants need consistent human contact.
An artist may be encouraged to build a personal brand when the real requirement is a coherent body of work and relationships with appropriate curators, commissioners or buyers.
A business may purchase AI tools because it fears being left behind, despite having no defined task for which the technology is suitable.
In each case, the externally supplied problem creates demand for an externally supplied solution.
Cultural intelligence asks where the language came from, whose interests it serves and whether the people experiencing the situation use the same terms.
If a founder cannot describe the problem without repeating the language of the solution provider, further investigation is required.
A symptom is not necessarily the cause
Early-stage ventures frequently build around symptoms.
Someone waits too long for a service.
A local programme attracts few participants.
A business receives website visits but few enquiries.
Creative practitioners repeatedly fail to secure funding.
Each symptom matters. But addressing it effectively requires some understanding of what produces it.
Low participation might result from:
Limited awareness
Poor timing
Inaccessible transport
Cost
Previous negative experiences
Lack of cultural relevance
Language barriers
Distrust of the organisation
Weak relationships with local groups
An offer that was designed before participants were consulted
Competing priorities that the organisation has not considered
The same visible outcome can have many causes.
The causes may also interact. A participant may initially encounter unclear information, then discover an inaccessible booking process and finally decide that resolving the confusion is not worth the effort.
An organisation records one abandoned registration.
The person experienced a sequence of barriers.
A startup that addresses only the final symptom may make the process look better without changing the underlying experience.
There may be no single problem
Startup language often assumes that a founder should identify one clear problem for one defined customer.
This can be strategically useful. A venture cannot respond to everything.
But social, cultural and community problems rarely arrive in isolation.
Consider a venture intended to help creative practitioners develop sustainable careers.
One artist may need commercial strategy.
Another needs affordable workspace.
Another understands their market but has caring responsibilities that restrict their time.
Another is producing strong work but lacks access to networks through which opportunities circulate.
Another is expected to undertake unpaid applications, promotion and relationship-building while earning income elsewhere.
Calling all of these experiences a “business skills gap” would obscure the structural differences between them.
A venture still needs focus. But focus should result from understanding complexity, not denying it.
The founder may decide to address one part of the wider system. That is legitimate if the boundary is made clear.
The responsible claim is:
This is the part of the problem we are equipped to address.
The irresponsible claim is:
This solution resolves the whole problem.
Who has the authority to define the problem?
Problem definition is also an exercise of power.
The person or institution that names the problem influences which responses appear reasonable.
A funder may define a community as insufficiently engaged.
A community may define the institution as insufficiently trustworthy.
An employer may define workers as resistant to change.
Workers may define the proposed change as poorly designed and imposed without consultation.
A technology company may define a process as inefficient because it contains human judgement.
People using the process may understand that judgement as the protection preventing harmful decisions.
None of this means that an external organisation can never recognise a legitimate problem. It means that its position affects what it notices.
When a venture intends to serve, represent or intervene in the lives of other people, those people should have an opportunity to influence how the problem is understood.
This participation must occur early enough to matter.
Inviting feedback after the service, programme or platform has already been designed asks people to comment on the founder’s answer.
It does not allow them to reshape the question.
Community knowledge is not free raw material
Listening to people is essential, but the language of customer discovery can conceal an extractive relationship.
Founders may be encouraged to conduct dozens of interviews, identify recurring frustrations and use those insights to develop a commercial proposition.
The method can produce useful evidence.
It can also treat people’s experiences as freely available material.
This becomes particularly sensitive when research involves communities whose knowledge has repeatedly been collected by institutions without visible benefit, acknowledgement or change.
A culturally intelligent research process should ask:
Why is this person being invited to contribute?
What will happen to what they share?
Is the purpose of the conversation clear?
Are sensitive experiences being solicited unnecessarily?
Will contributors receive payment, recognition, access or another appropriate form of value?
Can they decline or withdraw?
How will the founder report what was learned?
What influence will their contribution have?
Is the venture turning collective knowledge into privately controlled value?
Not every informal conversation requires a formal research contract. Proportionality matters.
But “we are only validating an idea” does not remove the founder’s responsibility to consider consent, reciprocity and power.
Look at what people do, not only what they say
Interviews can reveal how people understand and describe a problem.
Behaviour reveals how they currently respond to it.
A person may say that they would use a new service, but continue relying on an imperfect existing method because it is familiar and low-risk.
They may express support for a community initiative but be unable to attend because of work, transport or caring responsibilities.
They may want a sustainable product but choose a cheaper alternative when purchasing.
This does not mean that people are dishonest.
Intentions exist within circumstances.
A founder should therefore investigate:
What people currently do
What they have already tried
What they stopped using
What they tolerate
Where they improvise
What they pay for
Which inconveniences they accept
Which barriers cause them to abandon the process
Who they ask for help
Which organisations or people they already trust
Existing behaviour can reveal the practical competition facing a new idea.
The competitor may not be another company.
It may be a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group, a family member, a familiar workaround, a decision to wait or the choice to do nothing.
A venture must create sufficient value to change that behaviour—or work intelligently with it.
Complaints and refusals can contain valuable evidence
Founders often focus their research on people who express interest.
But the people who refuse, leave or remain unconvinced may reveal more.
A person who abandons a booking process has encountered something that the successful customer tolerated or did not experience.
A participant who does not return may have noticed a cultural or relational problem absent from the evaluation form completed by those who stayed.
A potential collaborator who declines may understand a risk the founder has underestimated.
A customer who chooses an alternative may have a different definition of value.
These people are not failed conversions to be pushed back towards the venture.
Their decisions are evidence.
The founder may not always be able to obtain an explanation. Quiet abandonment leaves incomplete information.
But patterns can still be examined.
Where do people leave?
Which questions appear repeatedly?
Who engages initially but does not continue?
What concerns are difficult for people to express directly?
What does the venture never hear because its feedback process depends on confidence, time or trust?
A problem becomes clearer when the founder studies the complete journey—including the points where participation ends.
Distinguish four different kinds of claim
One practical way to improve problem definition is to separate claims into four categories.
1. Observation
Something directly seen, heard or recorded.
Seven of the twelve people who began the enquiry form did not complete it.
2. Interpretation
A possible explanation of the observation.
The form may feel too long or request information people are not ready to provide.
3. Assumption
Something currently believed without sufficient evidence.
Reducing the form to three questions will increase completed enquiries.
4. Decision
An action taken in response to the current evidence.
We will test a shorter form for four weeks and compare completion rates and enquiry quality.
These categories prevent an interpretation from quietly becoming a fact.
They also create a visible connection between evidence and action.
The founder does not need perfect certainty before making any decision. Early ventures must operate with incomplete information.
But they should know which parts of their reasoning remain uncertain.
A useful problem definition has boundaries
A problem can become so broad that no venture could credibly address it.
“We want to solve inequality.”
“We want to transform education.”
“We want to help artists succeed.”
“We want to improve community wellbeing.”
These ambitions may express an important purpose, but they do not yet define a workable area of responsibility.
A more useful definition identifies:
The people affected
The specific situation
The difficulty they encounter
The consequences of that difficulty
The current alternatives
The relevant context
The part of the problem the venture may be equipped to address
What remains outside its control
For example:
Independent creative practitioners preparing their first substantial funding application may struggle to translate a coherent project into the language, evidence and financial structure required by funders. This can consume significant unpaid time and lead potentially valuable ideas to be abandoned before submission.
This definition does not claim to solve every inequality within arts funding.
It identifies a particular group, moment, difficulty and consequence.
It also creates research questions.
Do practitioners recognise this experience?
Which part consumes the most time?
What support already exists?
Is the barrier knowledge, confidence, eligibility, language, evidence, project design or access to professional advice?
Would a paid service reach the people experiencing the greatest difficulty?
The more precise definition makes the uncertainty more visible.
That is a strength.
The founder must ask whether the problem is theirs to solve
Noticing a problem does not automatically give a venture the legitimacy or capability to intervene.
The founder should consider:
Do we possess relevant knowledge?
Are we sufficiently close to the context?
Have we earned the necessary trust?
Are other people already addressing this effectively?
Would partnership be more responsible than competition?
Could our intervention displace existing community capacity?
Might the proposed solution create greater harm elsewhere?
Are we responding to a real need or positioning ourselves inside a fashionable issue?
What would we need to learn before proceeding?
Sometimes the conclusion will be that the founder is well placed to act.
Sometimes it will reveal that the venture needs a partner, adviser or different form of participation.
Sometimes the responsible decision will be not to proceed.
This is not wasted research.
Stopping an inappropriate venture before it consumes substantial money, labour or community trust is a valuable outcome.
Build a Problem and Evidence Map
At this stage, the founder can create a Problem and Evidence Map.
The map should contain the following elements.
The visible situation
What is happening?
Describe observable conditions without immediately explaining them.
The people involved
Who experiences the situation directly?
Who benefits from the current arrangement?
Who makes decisions?
Who performs hidden or unpaid work?
Who may be missing from the research?
Different interpretations
How do founders, customers, participants, partners, institutions and communities describe the situation?
Where do their explanations differ?
Existing responses
What are people already doing?
Which formal services, informal networks or personal workarounds exist?
Current evidence
What has been directly observed, measured, documented or heard from relevant people?
Important assumptions
What is believed but not yet sufficiently supported?
Structural conditions
What financial, institutional, cultural, technological or geographical factors shape the problem?
Venture boundary
Which part of the problem might the enterprise credibly address?
What remains outside its control?
Next evidence
What should be investigated before a solution is developed further?
The map should change as new evidence appears.
Its purpose is not to create one permanently correct description. It is to prevent the venture from forgetting how its understanding developed.
A practical field exercise
Before refining the solution, complete five exploratory conversations with people who experience, understand or influence the problem.
Do not begin by pitching the idea.
Ask:
1. Can you describe the last time you encountered this situation?
2. What were you trying to achieve?
3. What made it difficult?
4. What did you do next?
5. What have you tried previously?
6. What worked, even partially?
7. What made you stop or continue?
8. Who else was involved in the decision?
9. What would a meaningful improvement look like?
10. What do organisations usually misunderstand about this experience?
After each conversation, record what was actually said before writing your interpretation.
Then compare the conversations.
Look for patterns, but do not erase important differences simply to create a cleaner business proposition.
The objective is not to collect five endorsements.
It is to improve the question.
The decision to record
At the end of this stage, the founder should record a provisional problem definition.
It should answer:
Who experiences the problem?
In what situation?
What are they trying to achieve?
What prevents or complicates progress?
What happens as a result?
What evidence supports this understanding?
What remains uncertain?
Which part might the venture responsibly address?
The founder should also identify the most consequential assumption.
This is the belief that, if false, would most seriously weaken the proposed venture.
Examples include:
The intended participants recognise the problem.
The difficulty is important enough for someone to act.
Existing alternatives are inadequate.
The organisation can reach the people involved.
Someone has the ability and willingness to pay.
The proposed intervention can improve the situation.
The venture has sufficient legitimacy to participate.
The service can be delivered sustainably.
This assumption becomes the focus of the next stage of research and testing.
Better questions create stronger enterprises
The pressure to produce a solution can be intense.
A founder wants something to show. A funder wants defined activities. A potential partner asks how the project will work. A developer wants a specification. A website requires a service description.
Uncertainty can appear unprofessional.
But false certainty is more dangerous.
It produces products nobody needs, services that address symptoms, programmes designed around institutional assumptions and technologies that automate an incomplete understanding of the problem.
A better question does not delay progress.
It changes what progress means.
Progress becomes:
Discovering that two apparently similar audiences experience different problems
Learning that trust matters more than convenience
Recognising that the existing workaround contains something valuable
Finding that the intended buyer and beneficiary are different people
Identifying a structural barrier the venture cannot solve alone
Deciding that a partnership is more appropriate than a new platform
Narrowing the problem to the part the founder can credibly address
Stopping before substantial resources are committed to the wrong answer
The first product of a startup should therefore be a question strong enough to survive contact with other people’s realities.
Not:
How do we persuade people to use our solution?
But:
What is happening here, for whom, and what would we need to understand before deciding what deserves to be built?
That question may not produce an immediate launch.
It produces something more valuable.
A credible reason for the enterprise to move forward.
Learning Path Reflection
Before continuing, consider:
1. What problem do you currently believe the idea addresses?
2. Who defined that problem?
3. What have you observed directly?
4. Which parts of your explanation are interpretations?
5. What are people doing about the problem already?
6. Who may understand the situation differently?
7. What is the most consequential untested assumption?
8. What part of the wider problem could your venture responsibly address?
9. What evidence might persuade you to change direction?
10. What should not be built until that evidence exists?
Living Intelligence Record
Record:
The provisional problem definition
People and organisations affected
Different interpretations of the problem
Existing alternatives and workarounds
Verified evidence
Unsupported or partially supported assumptions
Structural and cultural conditions
The venture’s proposed boundary
The most consequential assumption
The next evidence required
Related Map
Problem and Evidence Map
Continue the Learning Path
Next article: Proximity Is Not the Same as Understanding
The next stage examines how founders can work with audiences and communities without assuming that personal experience, demographic information or good intentions provide complete understanding.
About This Series
This article is part of The Enterprise Beneath the Idea, the original Cultural Intelligence Studio article collection accompanying the From Idea to Sustainable Enterprise learning path.
The learning path combines original CIS thinking with carefully selected videos, podcast conversations, practical exercises, a Living Intelligence Record and connected cultural intelligence maps.
Its purpose is to help people make stronger decisions about what should be developed, changed, tested, paused or left behind.
Optional CIS Support
The Idea Clarity and Validation Review provides an independent examination of an emerging idea, its problem definition, assumptions, intended audiences, proposed value, available evidence and smallest credible next step.
Engaging CIS is optional. The review may conclude that further independent research or problem exploration is more appropriate than purchasing additional development support.