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).