More Creation, Not Solution
Why Great Consumer Products Build Experiences You Never Knew You Needed
Conviction
One sharp idea each week about what and how we consume, why we crave it, and how it shapes culture.
My Working Thesis
Great consumer products don't just solve problems we know we have, they create entirely new experiences we didn't know we wanted. While enterprise software thrives on addressing pain points, the most transformative consumer products expand possibilities rather than just removing friction.
But if this is true, what does it mean for how we should approach building consumer products? Why do so many founders still start with "what problem does this solve" instead of "what experience can we create"? Can we identify the patterns behind products that successfully create new desires rather than just satisfying existing ones? And are there categories where the solution-first approach actually works better?
This newsletter is me writing my way to the answers.
I never knew I wanted a newsletter platform until I experienced Substack.
I didn't realize how much I enjoyed reading and writing until suddenly there was this elegant interface connecting me directly to writers and ideas I cared about. No algorithmic feed, no ads, just pure content from minds I found fascinating. It wasn't solving a problem I knew I had but creating an experience I didn't know was possible.
And that's the thing about the most transformative consumer products: they rarely just solve problems. They create entirely new experiences that users couldn't articulate wanting until they encountered them. Yet if you listen to most product conversations today, especially in tech circles, everything revolves around "problem-market fit.” What pain point are you addressing? What friction are you removing? What job-to-be-done are you fulfilling? These questions dominate pitch meetings, product reviews, and founder interviews.
This problem-solution framework works beautifully for enterprise software and SaaS products. Businesses have clear needs, articulated pain points, and rational purchasing decisions.
But in my opinion… it fails spectacularly for consumer products.
The consumer products we love most the ones that create categories, change behaviors, and build emotional connections don't just solve problems we already had. They introduce us to experiences we never knew we wanted. They expand what we thought was possible rather than just removing what's painful.
The solution-first mindset has infected consumer product thinking, and it's limiting what founders build and how products evolve. I feel like its time to reconsider our approach: what if the greatest consumer products aren't solutions at all, but creations, new experiences that users discover they love only after experiencing them?
The Problem With Problem Solving
The problem-solution framework is so deeply embedded in how we think about products that it's become almost invisible. Y Combinator's application asks, "What is your company going to make? Please describe the problem you're solving." Every pitch deck template starts with a slide titled "The Problem." Investors routinely begin meetings by asking, "What problem are you solving?"
This is obviously no accident. This is the legacy of decades of enterprise software development, where identifying a clear business problem and building a solution is indeed the path to success.
If you can solve payroll problems for HR departments better than existing solutions, you have a business. If you can reduce cloud costs for engineering teams, you have a business.
But I've watched countless consumer founders contort themselves trying to retroactively identify the "problem" their product solves, even when what they're actually building is a new experience, not a solution. They know deep down they're creating something compelling, but they've been trained to frame it as solving a problem.
"TikTok solves the problem of boredom," they'll say, or "Instagram solves the problem of sharing photos with friends." These post-hoc problem statements sound plausible, but they miss the mark entirely. People weren't walking around desperately seeking solutions to these "problems" before these products existed. These products created entirely new behaviors and desires.
This mindset also fundamentally misunderstands how consumers make decisions. Consumers don't perform rational cost-benefit analyses of which product best solves their problems. They're drawn to experiences that resonate emotionally, that reflect how they see themselves (or want to see themselves), and that create moments of surprise, delight, or connection.
This shouldn’t lead you to mistake that consumer products don’t deliver value because they absolutely do. It's that the value they deliver often can't be articulated in advance as the solution to a pre-existing problem. The value emerges through the experience itself.
Experience Creators vs. Problem Solvers
Consider the products that have truly transformed consumer behavior in the last decade. Did they succeed by solving problems better than existing solutions, or by creating entirely new experiences?
As I ask this I know a lot of you out there will roll your eyes and say yes they solved a problem better than existing solutions but bare with me.
Airbnb didn't just offer a cheaper alternative to hotels.
Airbnb created an entirely new way to experience travel. Staying in neighborhoods you'd never visit otherwise, in spaces that feel like homes rather than hotel rooms, connecting with locals through their living spaces. The experience Airbnb created wasn't solving a clearly articulated problem; it was opening a new possibility that travelers didn't know to ask for.
Snapchat didn't solve a messaging problem.
There were plenty of ways to send messages before Snapchat came along. What Snapchat created was an entirely new form of communication, a space where conversations could be casual, raw, and free from the permanent record of traditional social media. This wasn't addressing a pain point users had identified. This was creating a new communication behavior that users discovered they loved.
Strava didn't just track runs better than existing fitness apps.
It created a social experience around physical activity, turning solitary exercise into a community experience. The competitive elements, the kudos system, the segments, these weren't solving tracking problems; they were creating new ways to experience and share fitness that users couldn't have articulated wanting before they encountered them.
ChatGPT isn't just a better search engine. (Well it also kind of is)
It's created an entirely new way to interact with information….conversational. Users didn't know they wanted to have ongoing dialogues with an AI about any topic imaginable until they experienced it. The value isn't in solving the problem of finding information more efficiently; it's in creating an entirely new relationship with information.
This isn't to say these products don't deliver utility because they absolutely do.
But their breakthrough success came from the novel experiences they created, not from their utility alone. If they had focused merely on solving existing problems better than competitors, they likely would have built incrementally better products that failed to capture users' imagination.
The difference between experience creators and problem solvers is they fundamentally change what gets built, how it's designed, and ultimately, how users respond to it.
The Delight-Utility Relationship
There's a fascinating relationship between delight and utility in the best consumer products. Its one that challenges the traditional problem-solution framework even further.
When I consider products that created entirely new experiences, I notice something curious: the delight they create often becomes its own form of utility. The line between "useful" and "delightful" blurs until they become inseparable.
Take TikTok.
On the surface, it seems purely about entertainment. Scrolling through short videos for amusement. But for many users, that entertainment has transformed into something functionally useful. People discovering new techniques for cooking, the student who finds explanations or cheat codes to homework problems, the parent who learns parenting hacks. They're all experiencing utility that emerged from what began as delight.
This pattern repeats across successful consumer products.
Spotify's discovery features became genuinely useful for finding music for specific moods and activities.
Instagram's filters became utilities for self-expression and personal branding.
What's happening is that these products create delight that serves as a utility for specific groups of users, even if that utility wasn't the primary design goal. The experience comes first; the practical applications emerge organically as users incorporate the product into their lives.
This creates a different kind of stickiness than pure utility.
When a product is merely useful, users stay until a more useful alternative comes along. But when a product creates a unique experience that becomes integrated into how users express themselves or how they connect with others, switching becomes much harder. Even if a competing product offers marginally better utility.
This is why experience-first products often build stronger retention than those focused purely on efficiency. People don’t just use them to solve a problem and then put them down. They use them again and again as it becomes part of their natural experience.
The social currency of novel experiences amplifies this effect. People naturally share experiences that surprised or delighted them, creating organic distribution that's much harder to achieve with mere utility. When was the last time you excitedly told a friend about a product that efficiently solved a problem, versus one that created a moment of genuine delight or surprise?
The most successful consumer products understand this relationship and design for it intentionally. They know that memorable experiences create their own form of utility.
More Creation, Not Solution
The distinction between solving problems and creating experiences isn't just philosophical but rather fundamentally changes what gets built and how users respond to it.
When founders approach consumer products with a solution mindset, they inevitably focus on incremental improvements: making something faster, cheaper, or marginally better than existing alternatives. Solid business but rarely transformational.
In contrast, when founders start by asking "what new experience can we create?" they open themselves to possibilities that users themselves couldn't articulate.
The relationship between delight and utility is more complex than the problem-solution framework suggests. In the most successful consumer products, delight becomes its own form of utility, creating value that emerges through the experience itself rather than from solving a pre-defined problem.
As consumer technology continues to evolve, especially with AI creating entirely new interaction possibilities, the opportunity to create novel experiences rather than just solve existing problems has never been greater.
But this raises a crucial question: If creating new experiences is so powerful, how do we actually do it? How do founders identify and build experiences that users will love, when users themselves can't articulate what they want?
Next week I'll explore the practical elements of experience-first product development: how taste functions as competitive advantage, why building for the passionate few often leads to mainstream success, and how to reimagine user research when the goal is creating experiences users don't yet know they want.
The solution mindset gave us better tools. The creation mindset will give us new possibilities.