I read somewhere once that founders see the world through 2 different problem solving lenses.
1 is the “Domain Expertise” problem which is the issue you aim to solve that you have experienced or observed in your life journey. Perhaps it is something you saw your parents struggle with, maybe it’s the disability you have, or a language barrier.
When starting my Digital Ad Agency digi.coffee I was attempting to solve a problem that I experienced for myself which was bringing traffic to the websites I built for businesses (I started as a freelancer). Facebook Ads was a way to immediately generate awareness and traffic and so I thought “aha!” I know a lot of others struggling to generate interest let me sell Facebook Ads as a managed service instead of development.
We are going on year 4 in business in 2021 and there are new opportunities and challenges always popping up.
The 2nd is a “Thesis Problem“. We can call SpaceX solving the problem of expensive space access by creating re-useable rockets. I don’t think Elon Musk has ever been to space (unless hes an alien) but he still noticed this was a problem to be solved AND had a end user in mind (N.A.S.A).
SpaceX has even more lofty goals of putting a human on Mars this century, which is crazy to think about.
Both these problem solving lenses are sparked by curiosity which then becomes an obsession that keeps driving the marketer to innovate.