I'd be curious to see examples of what "hair on fire" problems looked like when they were buggy, incomplete solutions to poorly-defined problems.
For example, I know that Google was a hair-on-fire problem: everybody searched for things on the Internet and nobody found what they were looking for. But was Facebook? I started using Facebook in 2004, before they'd taken VC, and I honestly didn't see the point (and still kinda don't). Perhaps I just wasn't the target market (and still am not), but then, how do you recognize a hair-on-fire problem when you're not necessarily in the target market for it?
(Interestingly, LiveJournal solved a hair-on-fire problem for me about 2 years before Facebook came out: how to keep in touch with friends that I'd met over the Internet but lived thousands of miles away. And yet Facebook is apparently a whole lot more successful than LiveJournal.)
Facebook totally was a hair on fire problem - if you saw a cute girl on campus and you wanted to look her up - all we had was a stupid freshman "facebook" (book of faces and names) and a crapy web version of the same.
Heh, interesting. That may have been my problem - I didn't particularly care about the cute girls on campus.
So then, an amended question: given that you do much better solving a problem that you personally have, what happens if you're a person of few desires? Someone who enjoys having a simple life and focuses intently on a few things that matter to them, but doesn't really sweat or even notice many of the things that annoy other people?
It seems like this personality type would be well-suited for entrepreneurship in general, between having a low personal burn rate and being able to focus intently on a topic, but the inability to recognize and get seriously worked up about a problem seems like a killer.
For example, I know that Google was a hair-on-fire problem: everybody searched for things on the Internet and nobody found what they were looking for. But was Facebook? I started using Facebook in 2004, before they'd taken VC, and I honestly didn't see the point (and still kinda don't). Perhaps I just wasn't the target market (and still am not), but then, how do you recognize a hair-on-fire problem when you're not necessarily in the target market for it?
(Interestingly, LiveJournal solved a hair-on-fire problem for me about 2 years before Facebook came out: how to keep in touch with friends that I'd met over the Internet but lived thousands of miles away. And yet Facebook is apparently a whole lot more successful than LiveJournal.)