In characteristically colourful style, Dave McClure admonishes the entrepreneurial community for pitching their products solution-first. This isn’t how you should pitch and it isn’t how you should position your product, suggests McClure. Problem-first pitching is how one should engage an audience and is how to create a product that has a use.
Pitch the PROBLEM first, connect with your audience emotionally around the problem, and then — and ONLY then — offer your solution as the remedy to that problem.
There are many insightful comments, discussing how problem-first thought is useful for entrepreneurs. Chris Yeh’s comment summarises it all quite well:
The “Solution looking for a Problem” issue is part of a larger entrepreneur syndrome, which is to focus WAAAY too much on his or her own point of view, rather than on the user’s (or better yet, the customer’s).