BookYol

Concept

Scratch your own itch

Scratching your own itch means building a business around a problem you have yourself. You know the problem better than any market research, you know when the solution is good enough, and you are your own first customer.

Fried and Hansson built Basecamp because they needed a way to manage their own client projects, and Rework generalises the rule: the best businesses solve a problem the founder has. The advantage is not sentimental. A founder with the problem can judge the solution without a survey, notices what is missing on the first day, and does not have to imagine the customer because they are one. The pastry chef who cannot find good sourdough in her town, the physiotherapist whose own patients cannot get an appointment inside a month, the translator whose clients need a contract turned around in a day: each starts with a problem they already understand from the inside. If you do not have the itch, the first job is to find who does and spend time with them before anything is built.

A real-life example

A software developer in Konya spends his evenings reconciling the accounts of his father's grocery shop, because no app handles its mix of cash, card and customers who pay at the end of the month. He builds a simple tool for that one shop, then shows it to three neighbouring grocers who keep accounts the same way. Two ask to use it; the business has started from a problem he had himself.

How to use it

  1. 1Write the problem you have that your idea solves, in one sentence.
  2. 2If you do not have the problem, find three people who do and spend an hour with each before building anything.
  3. 3Use yourself as the first customer: would you pay for this, at this price, this week?