Curiosity is a better
starting point than certainty.

Problem Lab started with a familiar feeling: getting excited about a business idea before understanding the problem behind it.

Kalpesh began with business conversations and the questions people brought into them. The aim is to slow down long enough to understand what happens, who deals with it, where the money goes, and what a small experiment could teach us.

A good question can end in “don’t build this.”

A painful problem does not automatically make a good business. Existing solutions may be enough. The economics may fail. The first useful move might be a conversation, a receipt or a week spent observing the work.

You should be able to see what we don’t know.

Source accounts, institutional evidence, operator claims and our own hypotheses carry different weight. We label reported numbers, keep missing evidence visible and update our judgment when better evidence arrives.

The current workbook contains ten desk-researched records. A new observation around students near ATLAS is an unscored lead. Neither source conversations nor our scores guarantee an opportunity.

Illustrations help tell the situation. They are not photographs of participants or evidence that the pictured event happened.