---
title: "Intercom's product principles: Start with the problem to achieve better solutions - The Intercom Blog"
description: "Intercom’s primary product principle “Start with the problem” guides all its teams to focus on understanding real customer issues more deeply before designing any solutions. The company argues that many businesses fail because they quickly jump to solutions without thoroughly exploring the underlying problem, leading to solutions that often miss the mark, do not match real customer needs, and end up unused entirely. Common pitfalls include insufficient problem comprehension, failing to update problem understanding over time, and solving problems that are too niche, not urgent, or not aligned with customer needs. To counter this, Intercom dedicates about a third of a team’s effort to problem definition before any building begins, using problem statements and customer research. This whole-team approach builds shared understanding, ensures accurate solutions, and allows “porpoising” between problem and solution understanding while defining measurable success metrics upfront to validate impact."
---

# Intercom's product principles: Start with the problem to achieve better solutions - The Intercom Blog

[Intercom](https://yomu.fyi/company/intercom) · Oct 8, 2026

**Type:** Explainer

## Summary

Intercom’s primary product principle “Start with the problem” guides all its teams to focus on understanding real customer issues more deeply before designing any solutions. The company argues that many businesses fail because they quickly jump to solutions without thoroughly exploring the underlying problem, leading to solutions that often miss the mark, do not match real customer needs, and end up unused entirely. Common pitfalls include insufficient problem comprehension, failing to update problem understanding over time, and solving problems that are too niche, not urgent, or not aligned with customer needs. To counter this, Intercom dedicates about a third of a team’s effort to problem definition before any building begins, using problem statements and customer research. This whole-team approach builds shared understanding, ensures accurate solutions, and allows “porpoising” between problem and solution understanding while defining measurable success metrics upfront to validate impact.

## Context

This post is the eighth in Intercom’s series exploring its product principles, focusing on the engineering principle “Start with the problem”.

## Approach / What changed

Intercom implements the principle through three practices: giving teams permission to focus on problems before solutions; using guidelines for problem definition expectations such as porpoising, focusing on customer problems, specifying success metrics, and scoping problems; and adopting a whole-team approach to problem research and definition involving everyone in understanding the problem.

## Takeaways

- Most companies fail because they jump to solutions without thoroughly understanding the underlying customer problem, often due to cognitive biases favoring solutions.
- Intercom allocates about a third of a team’s effort to problem prioritization and definition before any design or building begins, using tools like problem statements and customer research.
- The whole-team approach to problem definition, involving everyone in research and sharing insights, builds shared understanding and speeds up solution accuracy.

## FAQ

### Why do companies often skip problem definition?

People are wired to think in solutions, problem definition is emotionally hard and time-consuming, solutions are shiny and exciting, and stakeholders bias toward visible progress rather than deeper problem analysis.

### How does Intercom allocate effort between problem definition and solution building?

Intercom spends about a third of a team's focus units on problem prioritization and definition before any design, in contrast to most companies that spend the majority of time building solutions.

### What does "porpoising between problems and solutions" mean?

It means going back and forth between problem and solution understanding to sharpen both, without falling in love with either view, as described by Charles Conn and Robert McLean.

**Tags:** [Customer Experience](https://yomu.fyi/topic/customer-experience), [Design Process](https://yomu.fyi/topic/design-process), [Engineering Management](https://yomu.fyi/topic/engineering-management), [Jobs-to-be-Done](https://yomu.fyi/topic/jobs-to-be-done), [Product Management](https://yomu.fyi/topic/product-management)

- Source: [Intercom](https://www.intercom.com/blog/intercom-product-principles-start-with-the-problem)
- Source URL: https://www.intercom.com/blog/intercom-product-principles-start-with-the-problem
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-10-08T18:00:28.014Z

[Read original post](https://www.intercom.com/blog/intercom-product-principles-start-with-the-problem)