Problem-to-Company Creative Workshop
Convert a meaningful problem into a funded, operational company.
- Difficulty
- Expert
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 97%
The Problem-to-Company Creative Workshop treats venture building as an extended act of creativity. Start with a concrete problem, apply imagination and expertise to solve it, and then determine whether the solution can be embodied in a product. Only after that product logic exists do funding, team design, and company formation enter the sequence. Each stage transforms the output of the previous one: a problem becomes a solution, the solution becomes a product, and funding plus talent turn the product into an operating company. This ordering keeps the organization anchored to useful problem solving rather than creating a company first and searching afterward for a reason it should exist.
Origin
will.i.am describes identifying problems, solving them, creating products, funding those products, and building companies as the most creative workshop available to a creative person.
Core principles
- 01Company creation begins with a problem worth solving.
- 02A solution must become a usable product before it becomes a company.
- 03Funding and talent operationalize creative problem solving.
- 04Entrepreneurship is a creative discipline.
How to run it
- 1
Identify the problem
Define a problem clearly enough that its affected users and consequences are visible.
Pro tip Prefer a problem you have observed directly.
Watch out Do not begin with a company structure and invent a problem to justify it.
- 2
Solve the problem
Use creativity and domain knowledge to develop a solution and test whether it changes the user's situation.
Watch out An attractive concept is not yet evidence of a working solution.
- 3
Turn it into a product
Package the solution into something repeatable that users can adopt without a custom reinvention each time.
Pro tip Keep the first product narrow enough to test quickly.
- 4
Choose the funding path
Decide whether to use your own money or raise outside funding based on what materializing the product requires.
Watch out Funding does not repair a product that fails to solve the problem.
- 5
Recruit the operating team
Bring together the people required to build, distribute, and support the product.
Pro tip Recruit against concrete operational gaps, not impressive titles.
- 6
Create the company
Form the operating structure around the product once the solution, resources, and necessary people align.
In the wild
During COVID, will.i.am saw creative conversations, files, comments, and calls split across messengers, email, Dropbox, WeTransfer, and Zoom. He first wanted a better workflow for himself and his collaborators, then found engineers to build a project-based messenger combining communication, collaboration, asset management, access control, and AI assistance.
→ A recurring collaboration problem became the product and company FYI.
Common mistakes
Starting with the company
Forming an organization before validating the problem and solution reverses the value-creation sequence.
Confusing a solution with a product
A one-off answer must become repeatable and usable before it can support an operating company.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for creators and early founders who see a real problem but have not yet connected solution design to company formation.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when the proposed solution has not been tested or the problem is too weak to support a product.
From the transcript
“let's apply our our our minds and our imagination to solve this problem”
“if we solve that problem let's see if there's a company that we can create from solving that problem”
“identifying a problem solving that problem turning that problem into a product funding that product creating a company”
From the episode
will.i.am: Creativity is Your Currency, How AI Will Empower Underserved Communities and Evolve Humanity
will.i.am