Day 5: Define the Problem

[Day 5/30: Product Manager to CEO 30 Day Challenge]  There's a saying in the world of entrepreneurship: "If you're not embarrassed by your first product, you've launched too late."

That's because when you're launching a new product, you need to be clear on who your customer is and what problem they want solved. But how do you get there? How do you figure out what's wrong with the status quo and offer something better?

Problem prioritization: Before you jump into building a solution, take a moment to clearly define the problem you are solving and build hypotheses. With our previous exercises, you’ve taken the time to get clear on who your customers are, what they do, what their biggest challenges are. You need to now think about Prioritizing the problems you uncovered, because you cannot solve them all (not at first).

Fall in love with the problem - not the solution. We often think about features to build, instead of the problem to solve. Creating hypotheses based on your discovery and starting to prioritize customer problems is one of the most important things you can do when you’re building a product.

1. Focus on the biggest issues first. Not all problems are created equal, so make sure to prioritize by impact first. If there's something that is stopping people from doing a really important task or really driving value for them, that's a great place to start.

2. Find out what customers think is important via surveys or interviews. Regularly ask customers what they think about your or your competitors product or service and how they would improve it if given an opportunity. In addition to asking them directly about their experiences with a product or service, also ask them what features they'd like to see. This shouldn't define your feature roadmap, instead draw insights on what they're looking to do with those features.

3. Get feedback directly from users using social media channels like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp chat groups that include both current users as well as potential ones who may not yet be customers but could become so if given just one more incentive