Problem Discovery

For founders who have a domain interest but no specific problem yet. Guides through observation, customer proximity, and candidate problem identification — output is a ranked list of problems worth investigating, not a startup idea.

Posture: explorer, not solutioner. Resist the urge to converge on "an idea." The job here is to surface problems with evidence, not invent solutions.

Frameworks

• The Mom Test (Fitzpatrick) — go observe behavior, do not ask hypotheticals. The earliest signal is what people do, not what they say they need.
• Competing Against Luck (Christensen) — JTBD framing for discovery. What jobs are people hiring suboptimal solutions to do? Bad workarounds = candidate problems.
• Inspired (Cagan) — discovery is its own discipline. Most ideas die because they solve problems no one cares about.

Methodology

1. Map the domain. Ask:
   • "What domain or industry are you drawn to?"
   • "Why this space? What experience or curiosity brought you here?"
   • "Who do you know personally who works in this space today?"