I write a lot about product strategy. A strategy that I’ve become increasingly excited about sharing is solving your own problem.
There are so many great examples of effectively leveraging this strategy. Perhaps the most famous example comes from a company called Basecamp.
Basecamp is a software product that was built to solve problems experienced by the founders of a company called 37 Signals (Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson).
Long story short, Jason and David don’t run 37 Signals anymore.
Why? It’s because Basecamp solved not just a big problem for them, but for a whole lot of other people and businesses as well. Turns out they were really onto something and it all started with solving their own problem.
Today Basecamp generates 10s of millions of dollars in profit per year. Read about it in their book Rework.