ISB AI Founders
Day 1 · 10:45

Brainstorming problems

ISB AI FoundersS2
You first

Who has a great app idea?

▸ click to reveal after they answer
Wrong question. Nobody needs your idea. Somebody has a problem. We hunt problems today, not ideas.
Ideas vs problems

Nobody needs your idea. Somebody has a problem.

An idea: an app for studying. A problem: IB students lose their past-paper notes across five different apps the night before mocks. One of these has a person in it.
Idea vs problem · gaming

Same topic, totally different value

Just an idea
an app for gamers
An actual problem
day students get dropped from ranked queue when the dorm wifi cuts out at 9pm study hall, so they switch to mobile data and burn through it in a week
Idea vs problem · group chats

Same topic, totally different value

Just an idea
an app to organize group chats
An actual problem
new Y10 students don't know which of the six class WeChat groups actually matters, so they mute all of them and miss the football signup
Idea vs problem · lunch

Same topic, totally different value

Just an idea
an app for the cafeteria
An actual problem
students coming straight from PE have 12 minutes to eat before the bell, so they skip lunch twice a week rather than wait in line
Famous annoyance #2

Facebook started because one student could not see who was in his classes.

He built it for his own dorm first. Personal annoyance, tiny audience, real problem. Sound familiar yet?
Where big ideas actually start

Somebody, somewhere, was just annoyed.

Started as an annoyance · 2007

Airbnb: no rent money, a sold-out conference, and three air mattresses

Two guys couldn't afford rent in San Francisco. A design conference sold out every hotel in the city. They put three air mattresses on their floor and charged strangers to sleep on them. That was the whole company, before it was a company.
Started as an annoyance · 1998

Spanx: pantyhose that showed through white pants

Sara Blakely couldn't find underwear that didn't show a seam under white trousers. So she cut the feet off a pair of pantyhose and wore them herself. She later sold the company for over a billion dollars, still wearing her own invention to the meeting.
Started as an annoyance · 2004

Yelp: sick, alone, and no way to find a doctor

One of the founders caught the flu in a new city and had no idea which local doctor was any good. The internet had nothing useful to say. That gap became a review site used by hundreds of millions of people.
The format

Every thesis has this exact shape

[person]
Person
struggles to
[job]
Job
when
[moment]
Moment
, so they
[bad workaround]
Workaround
.
Four brackets. If you cannot fill all four, you do not have a problem yet.
This exact shape, before it was worth anything

Twitter's co-founder sketched his thesis on notebook paper.

[person] struggles with [job]... at [the moment]... so they [bad workaround]
Same four brackets you just learned. Dorsey's real notebook page, posted by him on flickr, still online today.
flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182613360
Bracket by bracket

Four brackets, no exceptions

[person]
Not "students." Try "IB students studying for mocks." Point-at-able.
[job]
Not the app. "Studying" isn't a job. "Finding last year's paper at 11pm" is.
[moment]
Not "sometimes." A time, a place, a deadline breathing on it.
[bad workaround]
What they do instead, badly. A screenshot folder is a receipt for real pain.
All four brackets, one sentence

IB students struggle to find last year's practice paper when it's 11pm the night before mocks, so they screenshot everything into one giant camera roll.

Read it as one breath. If a stranger can picture the exact person and moment, it works.
Vague dies, specific lives

The bar

Dead on arrival
an app that helps students study better
Alive
IB students lose their past-paper notes across five different apps the night before mocks, so they screenshot everything into one giant camera roll
Vague dies, specific lives

Same test, new topic

Dead on arrival
an app for making friends
Alive
new boarding students eat lunch alone for the first two weeks because table seating is unspoken and nobody explains it, so they eat in the library instead
Vague dies, specific lives

Same test, new topic

Dead on arrival
a fitness app for teens
Alive
students want to use the gym after school but the one paper sign-up sheet fills by 4pm, so most stop trying by week three
Exercise 1 · setup
OFFLINE · screens closed

Hands up: who complained about something this week?

Keep them up. Look around. Congratulations, every hand in the air just described inventory. You've been finding problems your whole life, you just called it complaining.
Exercise 1 · do it now
OFFLINE · screens closed

Annoyance inventory

5:00 on the clock
1Write 10 things that annoyed you in the last 7 days.
2Small counts: the queue, the group chat, the charger.
3Nothing is too small. You will filter later, not now.
5:00
Then: feeds THE WALL
Exercise 1 · debrief
OFFLINE · screens closed

What to listen for

Listen for annoyances that repeat for OTHER people too, not just once for you. Those are the ones worth chasing. Keep this list, it feeds the sticky-note storm.
Exercise 2 · setup
OFFLINE · screens closed

Problems hide inside routines

You stop noticing the friction in your own daily loop because it is exactly that: routine. Replaying yesterday hour by hour drags it back into view.
Exercise 2 · do it now
OFFLINE · screens closed

Day replay

5:00 on the clock
1Map yesterday, hour by hour, down the page.
2Circle every moment of friction, boredom or workaround.
3Star anything that happens every single day.
5:00
Then: feeds THE WALL
Exercise 2 · debrief
OFFLINE · screens closed

What to listen for

The starred, everyday moments matter more than the dramatic, once-a-year ones. Frequency beats intensity, every time.
Up, loud, and on the wall

Everyone stands. Everyone sticks a note up.

Exercise 3 · setup
OFFLINE · screens closed

Your annoyance might be the whole room's annoyance

One sticky note per problem, on the wall, means the entire cohort's raw material becomes visible at once. Patterns you can't see alone jump out instantly in a crowd. Everything goes to THE WALL.
Exercise 3a · do it now
OFFLINE · screens closed

Sticky-note storm

5:00 on the clock
1Every circled or starred problem from your two lists: one sticky note each.
2Big letters, one sentence, readable from 2 meters away.
3Slap it on the wall. No sorting yet.
5:00
Then: cluster as a room
Exercise 3b · do it now
OFFLINE · screens closed

Cluster into territories

4:00 on the clock
1As a room, physically move notes into groups that feel related.
2Give each cluster a rough name: food, wifi, group chats, sports, family.
3Nobody owns a cluster yet. Just organize the mess.
4:00
Then: dot-vote the hottest ones
Exercise 3c · do it now
OFFLINE · screens closed

Dot-vote the hottest clusters

3:00 on the clock
1Everyone gets 3 dot stickers.
2Vote for the clusters that feel most alive, not your own note.
3A heat map appears on the wall in under a minute.
3:00
Then: THE WALL is done, read it
Exercise 3 · debrief
OFFLINE · screens closed

Claim one problem from a hot cluster

Pick a note, yours or someone else's, from a cluster with real heat. You do not have to invent alone. The wall just did research for you.
You first

Would you pay ¥10, right now, to make this disappear?

▸ click to reveal after they answer
If yes without hesitating, it's a real problem. If you shrug, it's not painful enough yet. That shrug test is the ¥10 filter.
Exercise 3½ FOLLOW ALONG · laptops open

Brainstorm WITH Claude

Same login as this morning. Same Claude app, same account card.
5:00
1Open the Claude app. Feed it your 3 circled problems.
2Ask it to: attack each one, suggest adjacent problems you missed, and role-play the person who has it.
3Steal anything good. It works for you now.
5:00
Then: the market scan
Copy this prompt · run it now

The market scan

I am a student. My problem candidate: [X]. Who already solves this? List existing products, what they charge, and what users complain about in reviews. Then tell me what is still unsolved.
Reading the results

Three things to actually look for

Products
Who else already solves this, even badly? Note every name.
Pricing
What do they charge? A number means people already pay for this pain.
Complaints
What do reviewers hate? That gap is where you build.
You first

Two AI models disagree about your market. Which one do you believe?

▸ click to reveal after they answer
Neither, automatically. Disagreement means the answer isn't settled yet, which usually means there's room for you. Dig into WHY they disagree.
Exercise 4 · setup
OFFLINE · screens closed

Wide start. Narrow finish.

10
annoyances on paper
→
3
clusters with real heat
→
1
problem you claimed
→
1
sharpened thesis
Your claimed problem, sharpened by what the market scan just taught you, becomes your thesis. One sentence, four brackets, no exceptions.
Exercise 4 · do it now
OFFLINE · screens closed

Write your thesis

5:00 on the clock
1Take your claimed problem plus what the scan taught you.
2Write ONE sentence in the format. Stuck? Use the starter card: fill the blanks one at a time, workaround last.
3Print your name under it. Tape it to the gallery wall.
8:00
Then: THE WALL
Exercise 4 · debrief
OFFLINE · screens closed

Read it back to yourself once

Can a stranger picture the exact person and the exact moment? If not, sharpen one bracket before you tape it up.
How the gallery walk works

Everyone reads theirs aloud

Vague dies, specific lives: "helps students study better" dies, "IB students lose their past-paper notes across five apps" lives. And world-hunger theses like "fix climate change" get one question back: what annoyed YOU this week?
Checkpoint · gallery walk

Read it aloud. We keep the sharp ones.

This wall is where teams come from at 1:15.
“Make something people want.” Today you proved it.
Go deeper · optional

Four real places this all comes from

The essay this session is built on
long read
Paul Graham, one of Y Combinator's founders, on why nobody needs your idea, somebody has a problem. Same lesson as today, in his own words.
paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
A Y Combinator partner, live
32 min watch
Real YC companies, told by the person who helped fund them: how their founders actually found the idea that worked.
youtube.com/watch?v=Th8JoIan4dg
A billion-dollar thesis, handwritten
1 min look
Twitter's actual first sketch, on notebook paper, posted by co-founder Jack Dorsey himself. Yours today looked a lot like this.
flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182613360
All four are on the portal too. Nobody has to read them before lunch.
Next up · 13:15

Co-founder dating

Lunch first. If your thesis did not survive, that is the process working: you get first pick of the surviving problems after lunch. This afternoon you find who you build with.