You Gotta Smell It.
As a physician, I never watch medical shows. But after multiple EM docs recommended The Pitt, I caved and gave it a chance. I told my wife they got the vibes right, that I could "smell" this show.
Being a founder, I often get asked, how did you come up with the idea for Sketchy? You're using this obscure technique called memory palaces, used by people who memorize decks of cards. You're drawing characters on a screen. And people are raving about how it saved them in medical school and got them to pass their USMLE licensing exam. Did you write a business plan? Do a bunch of market research? Sure, we did some of that. But that is not why we knew it was real. We smelled it.
We were close enough to the problem to know the difference between something that was kind of interesting and something people were actually desperate for. We were living inside the constraints of the problem instead of studying them from a distance. We knew what mattered because we were dealing with it ourselves.
The problem was very real. Medical school is really hard. Each day you're given another mountain of information to learn, comprehend, and commit to memory. If you fall behind one day, it's really hard to catch up, because the next day brings more. I was many days behind. I wasn't even on the treadmill anymore, I was on the floor.
My cofounders and I stumbled upon this method of learning while trying to keep up with the pace and intensity of medical school. It started on paper and whiteboards when cramming for exams, and happened to work and stick. We kept using it, and later realized we had tapped into an ancient memorization technique.
The real insight came when we connected it to what we were already doing for other classes. We were already buying third-party tools like Pathoma and First Aid. Other people were struggling all over the world. We could recreate our in-person studying experience in a digital format, package it the same way as the other products we used, and share it with medical students around the world. We knew the gap in the market and how to solve it because we had solved it for ourselves.
We understood the user because we were the users. We knew it had to be concise, high-yield, and memorable. We had to cover what would be on the exam and not leave anything out. We also knew that watching videos at 2x speed was basically a p0 for medical students because for us, time was everything.
Once you get close enough to the pain, the right solution starts to become obvious. You see what people are already doing to cope. You see what they will tolerate, what they will ignore, what they will make time for, and what they absolutely need. A lot of that is hard to get from surveys, calls, or market research alone.
Those things still matter, but if you want to build something people really want, you have to get uncomfortably close to the problem. People do not want products. They want their problems to go away. You need to see it with your own eyes. You need to watch the struggle firsthand and try to feel the pain. You need to be close enough to tell when something is real.
You gotta smell it.