Most founders ask "Can we build feature X?" Wrong question. The question is "What problem are we solving?"
You're excited about a competitor's feature or an idea you had. But building features before validating the problem wastes months and creates bloated products nobody uses.
I've watched it happen. Founders spend six months building dozens of features, launch, and get crickets. Not because the execution was bad, because they never validated if anyone had the problem.
Why Problem-First Development Matters
Every feature must solve a real pain point. Not a nice-to-have. Not something users might want someday. A real, painful problem they're dealing with right now.
When you focus on problems first, you create simpler, more focused MVPs that users actually care about. Instead of building everything you think people might want, you build the one thing they desperately need. And that makes all the difference.
Here's the reality in SaaS: users don't stick around for nice-to-have features. They only stick around for painkillers. If your product isn't solving a problem that genuinely hurts, no amount of polish or features will make them pay month after month.
How to Validate Problems
Before we write a single line of code, we need to validate if the problem is real.
A great way is to talk to your potential users. Not surveys. Actual conversations where you can hear the frustration. Ask "How are you solving this today?"
If they're not solving it at all, it's not painful enough. If they're using a complicated workaround or paying for an expensive tool they hate, that's something.
In fact you should Look for these three things: frequency, frustration, spending. How often does this happen? How frustrated are they? Are they already spending time or money trying to solve it?
If users aren't trying to solve it manually, it's not a big enough problem. The best products replace painful manual processes with automated solutions.
Avoiding Feature Bloat
Adding features too early weakens your product.
Every new feature adds complexity. Makes it harder to use, harder to maintain, harder to explain. And it distracts from your core value.
Try to follow the "Core-Problem Rule": if a feature doesn't make the main problem easier or faster to solve, it's a distraction. Doesn't matter how cool it is or how many competitors have it.
Example: A founder wanted time tracking, invoicing, team chat, file storage, and calendar integration before launch. I asked: "What's the core problem?" They said "helping small teams know what needs to be done and who's doing it."
We stripped everything else. Launched with tasks, assignments, and a board view. Three features. Users loved it because it was focused.
If we'd launched with everything, we would've spent six more months building, confused early users, and probably failed.
Final Take
Every successful product starts with a problem so painful, people are already trying to solve it. The best developers don't build more features, they remove everything that doesn't serve the problem.
Your job as a founder isn't to imagine what users might want. It's to find what they're desperately trying to solve today, and make that easier. When you nail that one problem, users will tell you what to build next. But you have to earn that trust by solving their actual pain first.
So before you ask "What should we build?" ask "What problem are we solving, and is it painful enough that people are already trying to solve it?" If you can't answer that clearly, delay the build until you figure it out.
And honestly? That's the best decision. Because validation is way cheaper than building the wrong product.