Plenty of side hustles and businesses become lucrative because they fix an unsolved problem, or improve something that already exists.
If that seems easier said than done, there’s a simple solution: Study people who’ve fixed other unsolved problems before, self-made millionaire and RSE Ventures CEO Matt Higgins said at the CNBC Make It: Your Money virtual event last week.
“We all have within us a proprietary insight about how something can be done just a little bit better,” Higgins said, adding: “The vast majority of game-changing businesses are actually built on [those] insights.”
Higgins pointed to one particular billionaire as an example: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who accidentally co-founded his company while brainstorming ways to pay rent in 2007. Chesky and one of his co-founders booked out air mattresses to strangers who were in San Francisco for a design conference.
By solving a personal problem, realized they had a viable business idea. As a bonus, they solved someone else’s problem too: Travelers could stay in more affordable accommodations than hotels.
Airbnbs may not always be the least expensive option anymore — but the company has a market capitalization of $77.04 billion, as of Wednesday afternoon, and helped launch the modern sharing economy alongside companies like Uber.
In other words, you don’t necessarily need to invent a new product to be successful. Pay attention to your surroundings, and ask yourself if your solutions to everyday problems are replicable, Higgins said.
A common entrepreneurial theme
Chesky isn’t the only example worth studying: Plenty of other successful companies were created in a similar way. Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd launched her dating app, in which women initiate all conversations with matches, after spotting a common frustration in people around her.
“I saw a problem I wanted to help solve,” she wrote in a 2020 letter on Bumble’s website. “So many of the smart, wonderful women in my life were still waiting around for men…
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