As founders sometimes we dive so far into our own product we get lost, making everything more difficult than it needs to be.  It doesn’t have to be that way.

In a recent Founders RAW conversation I sat down with Adam Lieb, founder of gaming social network Duxter.  Early on in the conversation he brought up something I thought was interesting.

Wait…  Not interesting.  Actually, it was genius.

He basically said “find a problem, create a solution, and scale quickly.  It’s that simple.”

Wow, you would think we all figure that out.  But unfortunately we don’t.

What happens is we tend to 1) under-think the problem by not taking the time to talk to the target customer, thus missing the opportunity;  2) over-think the solution we provide and convolute our concept to the point of confusion; or 3) under-think the solution by simply copying another company.

Any way you slice it, the tendency for founders to veer off course is easy and happens often.  I call what Adam said genius because I am now convinced the real geniuses in our world are the ones that can take something complex and turn it into something simple for the masses to grasp.  People part with money only for things they understand.  Everything else, to the laymen, is gibberish.

From what I gathered during my conversation with Adam, he has seemingly nailed it with Duxter.  They do a ton of customer development.  They listen to what those customers are saying.  They then zeroed in on a problem, created a simple solution and then worked to scale it quickly.

Remember founders, it doesn’t have to be that complicated.

You can find more short clips of useful conversations at Founders RAW.