Ideas & Opportunity

How do I find a problem worth solving in an industry I have never worked in?

A starting point

Being an outsider is not fatal, but you have to close the knowledge gap fast and honestly. Go work the frontline of that industry for a while (ride along, do the job, sit in the back office), and collect the complaints nobody has bothered to fix. Your edge is fresh eyes, but only after you have earned enough context that insiders stop correcting you.

Go deeper

Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time.

3 resources 2 link-checked Listen Read

Listen

🎧 Podcast
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Why we picked it A long conversation with the founder of TSMC, one of the most consequential companies most people have never studied. It is a good listen for the founder eyeing an unfamiliar industry because it shows how deep domain judgment gets built over years of listening to customers and competitors, not from a quick read of a market. Treat it as a starting point on how insiders actually think, then go find your own version of those conversations.

TSMC Founder Morris Chang (Acquired)

On Acquired by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal ~1 hr 30 min

  • Real domain understanding comes from getting close to customers and the details of how the industry actually makes money, not from a surface summary.
  • Chang entered semiconductor manufacturing with a contrarian read (the foundry model) that most insiders dismissed, a reminder that outsiders can spot what incumbents take for granted.
  • Timing and a specific, unglamorous problem beat a broad thesis: the best entry point is often one narrow gap you understand better than anyone else.
Open acquired.fm →

Read

📖 Book
✓ Link checked Paid Intermediate

Why we picked it When you are entering an industry you have never worked in, the real risk is being fooled by a surface understanding and mistaking a few articles for fluency. This book lays out a self-directed method for getting to genuine competence fast, with case studies of people who reached real depth in months, not years. Use it as a plan for how to learn an unfamiliar domain deliberately rather than by osmosis.

Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career

From Scott H. Young by Scott H. Young ~304 pages

  • Directness matters: learn by doing the actual thing (talking to operators, reading primary sources) rather than proxies that only feel like progress.
  • Fast, honest feedback is what separates real fluency from confident-sounding surface knowledge, so build in ways to be corrected early.
  • A focused, intense sprint of learning can compress what most people assume takes years, which is exactly what a founder crossing into a new industry needs.
Open scotthyoung.com →
📄 Article
Free Intermediate

Why we picked it When you start with no credibility in a market, customer interviews are how you borrow the insiders' knowledge, and doing them badly quietly wrecks everything downstream. Garbugli, who wrote the book on lean B2B, gives concrete tactics for getting senior people to open up and for keeping yourself from talking your way into a false answer. Read it as a practical field guide, then adapt it to your own industry.

16 Tips for Great Customer Development Interviews in B2B

From Lean Startup Circle (Medium) by Etienne Garbugli ~10 min read

  • Aim for roughly 90 percent listening and 10 percent talking, and never pitch: your job is to understand the problem in their words, not sell a solution.
  • Meet one on one and, if a senior contact feels intimidating, move to neutral ground like coffee to even the odds and get an honest conversation.
  • Keep a consistent script so you can compare across interviews, and focus on real past behavior instead of what people say they might do.
Open medium.com →

People also ask

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