I love listening to the origin story of a company. It’s always interesting to hear how founders came across a problem and figured out how they wanted to solve it. But sometimes I hear the opposite: a founder decided to build a solution and then tried to figure out how it could help customers.

I call this the solution-in-search-of-a-problem challenge. When founders build a solution without keeping the customer or problem in mind, they end up in a gray area. They build what they think people want instead of what people actually want. The solution ends up doing an OK job of solving a few problems but not a great job of solving any. Customers are reluctant to pay for it because it doesn’t create much value for them. The founders find themselves talking to different customers with different profiles in search of one that loves the product. They’ve often put so much time into building the solution that it’s hard for them to see that it’s not likely to succeed because it’s only an average solution.

If you’re an early founder, keep your focus on the problem and your customers so you can avoid building a solution in search of a problem.