Solving a Known Problem

Yesterday, I read the handbook "Starting a Startup" by Julian Shapiro (It's great; you can read it here).

He talks about market pull, which you get when users love your idea and give you so much demand that you barely have to do anything. True market pull makes the skill of founders irrelevant.

There are a couple of startup categories that repeatedly generate market pull.

One of those is "Lowering Cost & Increasing Convenience". It's a no-brainer: if you solve a known problem with less friction and less cost, people will buy it.

"Well, you can have such a business but still make no money with it", I thought. A business such as AlbumCoverAI. It creates artworks; musicians already need those. It's a known problem. It's cheaper and quicker than hiring a designer.

But after reading on, it hit me: The product quality needs to remain the same. Argh. This is obvious. Product quality counts, not just convenience and pricing. Of course.

If AlbumCoverAI could produce artworks that match the work of professional designers, people would buy. There's no doubt.

Again, this is straightforward, but it was a profound realization for me. I was so focused on validating the problem and whether the idea was good enough that I didn't notice I was working on an already known problem. The question was never if people need this but whether I can match the current quality.

I could have skipped the validation campaigns. Instead, I should've validated product quality.

The problem might still be too small - if too few people need album covers, I can't generate larger profits - but there is some demand.

Okay, but does this change anything?

I can change my focus and work on product quality by using different AIs, using better presets, and building features that replicate the work of designers.

But ultimately, the success depends on the sophistication of the image generation models. If they suck, my product sucks. It's out of my hands.

I have more hope the product will succeed, though. Spending some time to improve the image quality will be worth it.