Popular, meaning lots of people have it

Growing, meaning more people will have it in the future



Urgent, should be clear



Expensive to solve, meaning you can charge more for your solution



Mandatory, they need to solve it, change in regulation is a good example



Frequent – many times a day us better then once per year

structure the approach to the research



plan the interview flow



protect you from fooling yourself



prove to the team that all went that way



generate extra content from the research



save time as everything is structured



save money



keep the team on track

It's always hard to raise money when you don't have sales and customers. Development also takes much time, effort and budget. So for many startup founders receiving investments on pre-MVP stage is crucial. In this article, we try to understand what are the main points for investors and how design thinking can help.In short, you should have as much of those attributes as possible:There are many ways to test your idea. One of the lifehacks here is to build a community around a problem and use and keep on collecting more insights about the issue and solutions. It will work not only for a problem but also for the sales process in the future. If community growth fast – it means there's a lot of energy around the problem. It's another great sign for investors as well. On the early stage, you probably will look on business angels or maybe even crowdfunding. If your investors experience the problem, that will help you a lot.But even if you don't know where to start, there's a trendy solution to understanding and shaping your idea - it's design thinking approach.Design thinking is a process that can help you find the best way to present your project. By its nature design thinking has a human-centered core that's why it encourages organizations to focus on the people they're creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes.Instead of starting with a problem, design thinking framework starts with observation. It's driven by a deep understanding of the context of a problem, rather than the problem itself and allows to find uncommon ways of reaching the goal.The financial industry has experienced a turbulent period due to FinTech disruption in recent years. Although customers' needs are the basis for any business, in today's competitive and customer-centric landscape, businesses must understand the customer on a much deeper level to come up with more innovative solutions.Design thinking in financial services helps to:Yes, design thinking can solve numerous problems, but many teams understand it as a one time implementation that will magically bring innovation. The problem is that adopting this approach creates a shift in perspective of solving different issues. And you'd better do it right from the beginning.On early stage it's always hard for the team to commit a lot of time and effort in basically anything. A properly built process with a clear goals (to get to X result within Y time) helps not to waste coordinational effort. Team workshops like design thinking can hold the team alined. But it also demands a certain list of specialist present, to cover all aspects and look at the problem from different angles.