Caveat: I'm approaching this from a 'indie hacker' mindset. The article mentions $10 million funding rounds, so they're probably approaching this from a different mindset.
The article distinguishes between a product business and a service business. In the former, the founders find a problem, build a solution, and then sell that solution to people who have the problem. In the latter, the founders find people who have a problem, and then build a solution for that problem.
In a product business, the risk is that you solve the wrong problem. In a service business, the risk is that you never find a problem to solve.
I used to be a schoolteacher, in schools where teachers tended to be on the verge of retirement. Most of my colleagues used computers because one day their typewriter had been taken away and a computer put in its place. Their technology use tended to be quite basic: emails and basic word processing. Most workflows were unchanged since the typewriter and mimeograph days. Almost all planning was still done on paper, on especially-printed planning books. (We were individually asked whether we wanted week-to-a-page or day-to-a-page when the stationery order was being prepared for the next school year.)
(Lesson planning is not a problem to be solved; I'm just using it as an example of the kind of mindset I was working alongside.)
This is a problem-rich environment filled with people who don't know that many of their problems can be solved by computers. You can't ask these people what problems they want solved, because they don't know that their problems can be solved. You have to have something to show them and point to and talk about before they can grasp the idea that it's even possible to automate some of their work.
However, I speak from a position of privilege. I spent years working in that environment, and I walked away with a list of problems - a list of potential products. If you've only worked in software, you won't know any good problems. You'll know some bad problems, and they'll be bad because your potential customers - other software engineers - are just as capable of building their own solutions as you. In that case, a service business is probably no more risky than a product business.
If you start a product business, your moat is the insider knowledge you have of how to solve the problem you solve. If you start a service business, your moat is your reputation for solving people's problems. If you have no insider knowledge, you start your business with no moat at all, and have to dig it while building your castle, whereas the founder with inside knowledge just has to build their castle within their pre-dug moat.
The article distinguishes between a product business and a service business. In the former, the founders find a problem, build a solution, and then sell that solution to people who have the problem. In the latter, the founders find people who have a problem, and then build a solution for that problem.
In a product business, the risk is that you solve the wrong problem. In a service business, the risk is that you never find a problem to solve.
I used to be a schoolteacher, in schools where teachers tended to be on the verge of retirement. Most of my colleagues used computers because one day their typewriter had been taken away and a computer put in its place. Their technology use tended to be quite basic: emails and basic word processing. Most workflows were unchanged since the typewriter and mimeograph days. Almost all planning was still done on paper, on especially-printed planning books. (We were individually asked whether we wanted week-to-a-page or day-to-a-page when the stationery order was being prepared for the next school year.)
(Lesson planning is not a problem to be solved; I'm just using it as an example of the kind of mindset I was working alongside.)
This is a problem-rich environment filled with people who don't know that many of their problems can be solved by computers. You can't ask these people what problems they want solved, because they don't know that their problems can be solved. You have to have something to show them and point to and talk about before they can grasp the idea that it's even possible to automate some of their work.
However, I speak from a position of privilege. I spent years working in that environment, and I walked away with a list of problems - a list of potential products. If you've only worked in software, you won't know any good problems. You'll know some bad problems, and they'll be bad because your potential customers - other software engineers - are just as capable of building their own solutions as you. In that case, a service business is probably no more risky than a product business.
If you start a product business, your moat is the insider knowledge you have of how to solve the problem you solve. If you start a service business, your moat is your reputation for solving people's problems. If you have no insider knowledge, you start your business with no moat at all, and have to dig it while building your castle, whereas the founder with inside knowledge just has to build their castle within their pre-dug moat.