After leaving Amazon, where I had worked in supply chain data analytics, I knew I wanted to build something in software. But I also knew that without a painful, real-world problem, any solution would be built on sand. Instead of sketching startup ideas, we went on a problem-hunting mission.
We called every entrepreneur we knew and asked them a single question: if you had to start a company tomorrow, what problem would you tackle? Their answers pointed us in an unexpected direction: B2B industrial sales administration.
To test it, we interviewed more than 150 companies across the manufacturing, chemicals, and industrial distribution sectors. What we discovered was staggering: around 80% of them still processed purchase orders manually. Every day, teams would open emails, read attached PDFs or Excel files, check prices and quantities, and retype all the information into their ERP. Entire departments spent their days on this repetitive and error-prone task.
That was our “aha moment.” The problem was invisible to outsiders, yet everyone living it felt the pain.
Turning a boring problem into a big opportunity
At first, we hesitated. Order entry is not glamorous. It’s not the kind of topic you brag about at a party. But boring problems are often the best ones to solve, because they are:
- Universal: every B2B company has orders to process.
- Costly: errors mean delays, unhappy customers, and lost revenue.
- Overlooked: competitors tend to chase flashier ideas.
We built Limnos, an AI agent that reads incoming purchase orders, extracts the relevant data, validates it against the ERP, and sends back clean, error-free orders. No more manual retyping.
Today, Limnos collaborates with industrial groups that generate hundreds of millions in revenue. What began as a “boring” problem turned out to be a massive opportunity.
Lessons for students and aspiring founders
Looking back, the mindset of problem first, solution second has shaped everything we do. For anyone at LBS thinking about entrepreneurship, here are four lessons I would share:
- Don’t fall in love with your first idea. Ideas are cheap. Instead, fall in love with problems that are painful, frequent, and costly. That’s where value lies.
- Listen before you build. Spend more time interviewing potential customers than polishing slide decks. Shadow teams, ask questions, map their workflows. The best insights come from observation.
- Boring is beautiful. The problems that don’t make headlines are often the ones that create the strongest businesses. If it feels unglamorous but mission-critical, you may be onto something.
- Start small, think big. We began with pilots for individual sites. Once we proved the value, larger groups were ready to scale. Early wins build trust and momentum.
Conclusion
When we left our jobs without a plan, many people thought we were reckless. In truth, it was the best decision we made. By forcing ourselves to hunt for problems instead of jumping to solutions, we uncovered a challenge that was hidden in plain sight – and built a company around it.
If you’re an LBS student dreaming of entrepreneurship, don’t start by asking: what solution should I build? Ask instead: what problem is so painful that people will beg me to solve it?
Opportunities rarely come wrapped in glamour. More often, they are hidden in the boring, everyday frustrations that everyone else ignores. That’s where the real gold lies.