Focus on who your startup serves and why over its solution

Thompson Aderinkomi is the co-founder and CEO of Cloudburst client Nice Healthcare. After taking his sick one-year-old to the clinic multiple times for what turned out to be a common diagnosis (in the deep of winter and to the tune of over $600 no less), he decided that he deserved better. His belief—that primary care should be enjoyable while costing radically less—is what has made Nice Healthcare a seven figure business today.

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Why startups fail

To start a company, a founder must have strong beliefs about how a certain slice of the world should be. But when it comes to indie-founded startups, conviction is only the beginning. One of the top reasons startups fail is that they don’t serve a market need. This often happens when founders follow their passion for one particular idea instead of channeling it into exploring their options.

Some call this phenomenon "jumping to solutions," and it's a phrase I really like. Just like conclusions that are made before understanding the full situation, a founder's initial idea is rarely the best one for the problem at hand. Indie Founders use their initial ideas to uncover what problems they care about and the people that have them as opposed to rigidly pursuing them.

I enjoy the thrill of building something new as much (or more!) than the next person. In my 20+ years of launching companies as a founder and with clients, I've found that lasting satisfaction comes from building something useful—that solves a bona fide problem or sparks immense joy—rather than purely novel. Whenever I'm seeing an idea struggle to gain traction, I find that what's needed is to let go of my ego and return my focus to "who" and "why."

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Problems vs. solutions

So, Indie Founders not only need to find multiple solutions they're passionate about. The solutions also need to be something that people want or need badly enough (read: will pay for) to be able to sustain a business.

The way to find solutions that won't fail is to focus on the people you want to serve and their problems—your company's "why" and "who"—more than you do on what your product does and how it does it. Ask yourself who your company is for and why, and the rest will become clear. As Simon Sinek has so compellingly put it, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Having a clear vision for those people and that why is the enduring foundation on which great companies are built.

If you have an idea, odds are that it solves a problem. 100 years from now, what's still going to be around, the problem or your idea? Technologies and business models come and go, it's inevitable. The companies that last are the ones that were built to solve something bigger than themselves. Having that kind of faraway North Star versus a more finite, inward-looking vision is what keeps organizations growing and innovating.

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Success means staying open-minded

Technology, like money, is a powerful tool, but ultimately its value lies in how it's used. When you have an idea for a solution, it's very easy to get attached to the notion that it's a good one. Most founders start out with certain ideas about what will work. Successful ones talk to their customers about their ideas, figure out ways to test them out, and stay open to all the outcomes that work might lead them to.

Believing that care for the typically healthy could cost little and still delight was the starting point that led Nice Healthcare to build a location-free clinic that's far simpler to administer. Nice's "who" and "why" were what dictated their early technology decisions. Virtual visits and mobile apps weren't what led, but were what followed. Instead of focusing on their product, they focused on their patient experience. Amazing innovations like unlimited access to care and free prescriptions were the result.

For most Indie Founders, however, embracing broad thinking about people and problems isn't just a matter of maximizing opportunity. It really is the biggest difference out there between who will sink and who will swim.

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To learn more about how successful Indie Founders think, read my four-part guide on The Indie Founder Mindset: A Guide to Unlearning VC.