Brian Long - Founder of Attentive and TapCommerce

Problem Hunting - A Practical Guide

In this episode of the "Idea Maze," I sit down with Brian Long the founder of Attentive and TapCommerce. Brian is one of the most successful entrepreneurs I’ve ever interviewed and very recently, published a book titled “Problem Hunting” that consolidates all of his learnings and advice around starting and scaling a new business. “Problem Hunting” aligns very closely with this newsletter because it specifically focuses on some of the tactics around searching for and identifying attractive opportunities as well as how to get accurate and productive feedback in the search for product/market fit.

This post will be shorter than some of the others because folks would be better served by just buying his book. But I thought I’d call out two very interesting insights from the interview.

The first is around soliciting feedback. Most founders are quite willing to get out of the building and talk to lots of prospective customers or industry experts to gather feedback. But in Problem Hunting, Brian describes that most people you talk to are way too nice and hesitant to tell you what they really think. This is multiplied by the natural urge for a founder to try to get positive feedback to confirm their own biases. This leads to a potentially devastating false signal. I like Brian’s advice to try to get folks to quantify their feedback and also to appropriately probe and to allow for moments of uncomfortable silence so that you can truly draw out what people think.

The other interesting tidbit is his strong belief that a recruiter should be THE FIRST hire of any startup. This is counter-intuitive advice, but something that I have heard before from a few repeat founders. Ultimately, great companies are built by world class people, but founders can spend an enormous amount of time in identifying, evaluating, and closing great talent. A recruiter is a huge force multiplier for the founder around perhaps the most important part of establishing a winning company.

The rest of the interview has tons of great nuggets, so please give it a listen and consider getting your own copy to Problem Hunting on Amazon or elsewhere!