A founder's framework

Most startups don’t fail because the product is hard to build or because of competition. Instead, they fail because the problem they try to solve isn’t painful enough.

None of this should be new. Anyone serious about building a company has already heard that. A startup is about solving a customer’s problem, talking to users and validating before building.

But here’s the thing, from my experience, most founders pretend to know all of that. But in practice, very few apply these rules.

Even worse, for me the problem is deeper. YOU are lying to yourself because you don’t really know what you want from your life yet, and that’s okay.

Every criterion listed below comes from a mistake I’ve made.

Over four ventures, I’ve shipped 5 applications to 3,000 different users and built multiple open-source packages downloaded more than 80k times in total.

Impressive or not, building and shipping was the easiest part. For me, the hardest part was understanding the customer’s problem and getting them to pay for my solution.

So, if you are about to start a company, use this as a checklist of the traps to avoid. It can save you the months I’ve spent building before validating.

Note that this is a living document, updated as I learn. So come back sometimes to see if things have changed :)

Getting the definition right

Everything developed below starts from one definition of what building a startup really is:

Solving a painful problem, experienced by people you understand deeply, in a big enough market, where your team has an unusually strong founder-market fit and a credible path to product-market fit.

Everything else in this framework unpacks it, phrase by phrase.

A cool technology, an interesting product, a trendy market or an idea that sounds impressive is not a startup.

If you don’t agree with this definition, then one of two things is true.

Either you can define it better, and your definition is worth sharing. Or you don’t really want to build a startup. You want something else, and that’s fine.

Journey to build a startup

Here’s the list of everything we’re going to cover.

  1. A painful problem
  2. A customer you understand
  3. A big enough market
  4. A team built to last
  5. A path to product-market fit

The checklist at the end sums it all up.