How often do you hear someone say, “Sometimes the most obvious solution is right in front of you”? If that’s the case, why is it that so many of us approach things in an inefficient manner, not seeing the opportunity for a better way?

I find it interesting that some of the most amazing innovations in recent years have fixed obvious problems that we had just learned to deal with in a subpar fashion.

Here are a few such examples:

Ordering a Taxi

I can’t believe that to order a taxi 5 years ago, I would do something like this:

1. Google the number for a cab company.
2. Order the taxi with an operator telling me it “should” be there in 10-20 mins.
3. Run to the window every 2 mins (half naked) to make sure taxi has not arrived yet and doesn’t leave.
4. 17 mins in – Is the taxi coming? I call again to get the answer, “Oh yeah, any minute now.”

Brutal! But we all did it over and over until finally Uber (and many others) came to the rescue and fixed not just the above, but so many other problems associated with the journey from point A to B. The solution was right there, and they found a way to disrupt the norm we had adjusted to.

Signing a Document

I can’t believe the ridiculous process many of us undertake to print, sign and send a document electronically. The routine plays out something like this:

1. Print the document (assuming you can actually find a printer – insert 4 more steps if your printer is misbehaving).
2. Sign the document.
3. Scan the signed document.
4. Email the document to the other party to sign.
5. Remind the other party to send you back a fully executed version.

Again brutal! But in recent years, companies like DocuSign (and again many others) have come to the rescue to create a seamless way to eliminate paper, scanners, and the overall chase by accepting e-signatures.

What’s amazing is that the two companies above who are making our lives better (I know they’re not curing cancer, but still better) are now valued into the billions!

When my co-founder and I got started here at Uberflip we also looked for ways to disrupt broken learned behaviors. Our first offering, which was really the MVP (minimum viable product) compared to what we offer today, allowed marketers to stop using PDFs to send and share content. Similar to the above, we’d observe illogical behaviors like this:

1. Attach PDF to an email, or force the download of an asset from a website or, even worse, social.
2. Force user to open the downloaded PDF in Adobe Reader and leave the flow of the website.
3. Lose the ability to present a “next” or “suggested” piece of content
4. Lose any insights from engagement metrics due to offline nature

I could go on, but you get the picture. Illogical, but adopted as the norm. And many of us still do it today when there are better ways to share content.

When we decided to chase an even bigger problem, we spent months analyzing other broken practices that our clients were used to doing with others forms of content beyond just PDFs. A couple of the comical things we observed included:

• Organizing content in silos by format (i.e. Webinars, Infographics, eBooks and Articles each on their own page). When is the last time you went to a site as a consumer and said, “I’m going to learn about these guys by reading white-papers. No we do so by topic or the specific challenge we’re facing in our business.
• After spending big dollars to drive people to our site, we promote a big “Follow us on YouTube” button (or other social site) as a quick door out into the abyss of competitor and cat videos.

There were many more, and the truth was we had been personally guilty of them too at some point.

So we decided we would change the world! We’d fix a broken behavior. In doing so, I thought I’d share a few key learnings as we take on this tall order.

1. Passion: It helps to have a passion for the problem. We have always been marketers at heart and, as a result, we feel the pain we are trying to solve. Your ability to experience the problem or at least empathize with your user is key.
2. Use your solution: Even if you don’t have experience with the problem, create it by becoming a user and experiencing the pain.  In our case, the need to acquire customers meant it was logical for us to use our own platform. If you’re solving for a problem that’s hard to create, try and bring users into your company so you can observe how they use the solution and what they need it to do next.
3. Focus on Design: Steve Jobs was not the first one to create a tablet-like device. I remember having an old school Compaq iPaq (crazy, the name similarity) device 10 years prior. But the design and experience just wasn’t exciting. Be sure to plan design and the user experience in a way that is enticing and welcoming to a very new way of thinking.
4. Be prepared to educate: Not everyone has realized the problem just because you did. Be prepared to teach.  Be it the way Apple did through their ads showing us use cases for the iPad, or hiring challenger sales reps who are willing to take the time to teach before asking for “it”.
5. Embrace the Ecosystem: Companies like Uber and DocuSign achieved uptake by plugging into other platforms and tools that customers were already using. For Uber it was sponsoring events or appearing in Google Maps’ suggested routes. For DocuSign, platforms like Salesforce were key. We did the same at our company by plugging into content providers and marketing automation solutions that our customers were already using. It’s pretty logical to be where your customers are, but plan carefully because you can’t integrate everywhere out of the gate – a good API infrastructure will save you in the long run.
6. Focus on Execution: There’s nothing more I can say than that execution (and a bit of dumb luck) is the key to winning. I don’t know who tried to launch the first taxi app or e-signature tool, but I know who’s executing best and, as a result, I mentioned those companies earlier. Proper execution takes a mixture of the first 5 points, a great team, and a commitment to success.

Our company may not be worth a billion dollars today, but I believe we’re still early in our focus to improve how marketers manage content. In 2009, Uber, like you, had to convince someone there was a broken process they could fix. Their idea was likely valued around $1 million dollars (my assumption from the $200k angel round). Just six years later they raised a Series E round of $1 billion. I find it amazing to think the next big thing will likely solve another behavior people dumbly do over and over right before your eyes.