What Good Problem-Solution Fit Actually Looks Like

Most founders I meet don’t struggle to come up with ideas; they struggle to know if the problem they’re solving is actually real.

And the difficult part is this: it often feels like it is.

The conversations are positive. Friends and family are engaged. You get encouraging feedback, maybe even a few “We’d definitely use this.” On the surface, it looks like progress. It feels like momentum.

But none of that confirms problem–solution fit.

In my experience, this is where a lot of founders get stuck, not because they aren’t capable of building a solution, but because the signals they’re relying on are easily misread. Especially in environments like the UAE, where feedback is often generous and well-intentioned, it can be very easy to mistake politeness for validation.

Problem–solution fit isn’t a feeling. It’s something much more specific than that, and if you don’t know exactly what to look for, it’s surprisingly easy to convince yourself you’ve found it when you haven’t.

Why the Signals Are Easy to Misread

Founders start too close to home. They share the idea with friends, family, work colleagues… people who are supportive, interested, and often impressed by the initiative alone. The conversations are easy. The feedback is positive. It feels like validation.

But it’s not necessarily coming from the person who actually experiences the problem, and the sample doesn’t always reflect the entire target market.

And even when founders do speak to potential customers, the conversations are often not grounded in anything specific. There’s no real structure to what they’re trying to understand. The problem is introduced by the founder, explained by the founder, and then validated by the person they’re speaking to.

For example, “That’s a great idea” signifies politeness, not validation. “We’d definitely use this” is a hypothetical commitment, not a signal. Strong interest without any specifics is low signals, not confirmed fit.

All of these sound right, but none tells you what actually happened in the conversation — or whether the problem exists without you in the room. 

How to Look for Real Signals

Before you move forward, it’s worth asking yourself a few things directly.

“Do I know who my ideal customer is, where they are and how to reach them?”

“Have I conducted qualitative and quantitative research with a large enough sample to represent my target market?”

And think about the type of questions you are asking. Avoid leading questions. Instead of explaining the solution and asking, “Would you use this?”, ask the customer to describe a scenario:

• “Tell me about the last time you encountered this problem.”

• “What was hard about it?”

• “How did you solve it?”

“If there is no workaround, there is usually no urgency. And without urgency, there is no movement.”

What Fit Is & Isn’t

I have found that it’s often more useful to name what isn’t problem-solution fit, because that helps you to narrow your focus and find the true customer needs as opposed to nice to haves.

If it’s a nice to have, the conversation will stay hypothetical. It will sound logical. It might even sound compelling. But it won’t connect to anything grounded in their day-to-day reality.

• It looks like a long conversation where the other person is engaged, but they never once describe how the problem actually shows up in their day.

• It sounds like agreement, but only after you’ve explained the problem first.

• It feels like momentum, but every next step is driven by you.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that. It just isn’t fit. 

If the problem is real, it already exists in their world — without your input. It has context. It has friction. It has consequences. And importantly, they may have already found a way — however imperfect — to deal with it.

You see this most clearly when someone can describe the problem without your help.

Not repeating your language. Not agreeing with your framing. But explaining, in their own words, what’s not working, where it breaks, and more importantly, how they are currently dealing with it.

When a founder can describe the customer’s exact workaround, that’s when things start to shift. A spreadsheet that someone updates manually every week. A process that requires three people to check the same thing. A workaround that exists not because it’s good, but because it’s the only option available.

Real problems often already have solutions. They’re just inefficient, expensive, or frustrating enough that people tolerate them… until something better comes along.

If there is no workaround, there is usually no urgency.

And without urgency, there is no movement.

What Signals Reveal

In conversations that do have fit, the discussion moves forward without you forcing it.

• Someone asks when it will be ready.

• Customers readily join your waiting list.

• They want to know what it would take / how much it would cost to try it.

• They bring in someone else from their team or network to learn more about the solution.

The conversation shifts from “What is this?” to “How would this work for us?”

It’s a subtle change, but once you see it, it’s hard to miss.

What it feels like, interestingly, is not excitement. It’s clarity.

You don’t need to explain the problem anymore. You don’t need to convince. The conversation becomes more practical, sometimes even more direct. Objections become specific. Constraints become visible. Things either move forward, or they don’t — but for real reasons.

The conversation has moved out of theory and into reality.

And this is where the harder part comes in.

Because if you start looking for these signals properly, you don’t just confirm fit; you also expose when it isn’t there.

• Sometimes the problem exists, but not in a way people are willing to pay to solve.

• Sometimes it’s real, but only for a much smaller group than you expected.

• Sometimes the problem is adjacent to what you thought, but not quite the same.

That can be uncomfortable, especially if you feel ready to start building. But at this stage, the next step isn’t a full product build. It’s something small enough to test in their environment: a pilot, a manual version, a stripped-back solution that fits into the way they already work.

The point is not to prove your idea. It’s to prove that their problem is strong enough to change behavior. If that pull isn’t there, building won’t fix it. It will just make it more expensive to ignore. Don’t be afraid to pivot, and recognize that your initial approach may not have been quite right.

Remember, if there is one thing worth paying attention to, it’s where the energy in your conversations is coming from.

If you are the one driving the problem definition, the follow-ups, the next steps, you are still creating momentum.

If they are, then something real is starting to take shape.

Karen Cantwell is the founder of Cantwell Management Consulting. As a strategy and innovation professional with over 20 years of experience across government, startups, and the private sector, she specializes in building and scaling ventures, delivering complex programs, and supporting entrepreneurs to move from idea to execution.

Karen works with founders inside the FRWRDx IDEA Program. Rolling cohort applications are open. 14 weeks, 7 milestones, AED 3,000 — and you keep your company.

Apply