Problems You've Actually Felt

Why it matters

Every business that matters started as somebody’s actual annoyance. Not a market opportunity spotted from a spreadsheet — a real moment where something was harder, slower, or more expensive than it should have been, and someone decided to fix it. You have those moments too. You’ve probably had one today, even if you didn’t notice it.

This lesson is about noticing on purpose. You’re not looking for “a business idea.” You’re looking for problems — things that are annoying, slow, expensive, confusing, or missing — in your own life and in the groups you’re actually part of: your school, your team, your online communities, your family. The wider you search, the more raw material you have to work with next week, when you narrow it down to one.

Twenty is the target because the first five ideas that come to mind are usually the obvious ones everyone thinks of. The interesting ones tend to show up around problem twelve or fifteen, once you’ve stopped skimming your own life and started paying real attention to it.

You don’t need a good idea yet. You need twenty honest observations, written down so you can compare them next lesson. This lesson doesn’t decide anything — it just gives you something real to choose from.

What to watch for

How to Get and Evaluate Startup Ideas | Startup School

• Watch for where Friedman says good ideas actually come from — usually somewhere close to a problem you already live with.
• Notice the difference between noticing a problem and inventing one because it “sounds like a business.”
• Skip the fundraising and later-stage growth material later in the talk; you only need the first 20 minutes.

Start with Claude

Use Claude as a brainstorming partner, not a vending machine for ideas. Paste the prompt below and answer honestly about your own life — Claude’s job is to keep asking where else you’ve felt friction, not to hand you a list of generic startup ideas.

I'm building a Problem Inventory for the Spark stage of Make First — 20 real problems I've noticed in my own life or in communities I'm part of (school, teams, hobbies, online groups, family). For each one I need: where I felt it, who else has it, and what people do about it today.

Don't hand me a list of generic startup ideas. Instead, ask me questions about my actual day, week, and communities, one at a time, until problems surface naturally from my answers. Push me to be specific — "school is annoying" isn't a problem, but "I lose track of which of my six group chats has the actual homework assignment" is. Keep going until I have at least 20.