The Question Nobody Asks: Why You?

I’ve mentored hundreds of entrepreneurs over the years. The conversations usually start the same way: they’ve found an opportunity. They’ve seen a gap in the market. They’ve identified a problem that needs solving. And they want to know how to build the solution. But there’s a question I find myself asking over and over, one that stops most of these conversations cold: Why you?

Not “why this problem” or “why now” or “why this solution.” Why you, specifically? What makes you the right person to build this?

The silence that follows tells me everything.

The Opportunity Obsession

The startup ecosystem has trained founders to think like salespeople. Scan the market. Find the gaps. Identify unmet needs. Build for them.

This isn’t wrong, exactly. Obviously you need an addressable market. Obviously you need a problem worth solving. But this framing puts all the emphasis on the opportunity and almost none on the person pursuing it.

I watch founders scour LinkedIn and Reddit, looking for signals. What are people complaining about? What’s missing? Where’s the friction? They collect these signals like evidence in a case they’re building—proof that a market exists.

But market signals, no matter how compelling, are only half the equation. The other half is you. And that half gets skipped.

The Four Questions (and the One People Skip)

Years ago, I developed a framework I call the four big questions. Every business, product, or service needs clear answers to these:

1. What is it? Can you explain what you’re building clearly and concisely?
2. Who is it for? Do you know your target customer specifically, not generically?
3. Why should they care? What makes this interesting or valuable to them?
4. Why you? What makes you the right person to build this?

Most founders can answer the first three. The fourth one? That’s where things get uncomfortable.

The Fifth Question

In crowded markets, there’s actually a fifth question that matters: Why not them?

If competitors already exist—if people are already solving this problem in various ways—you need to understand why customers would choose you over the established options.

This isn’t just about features or pricing. It’s about the full picture: Why would someone switch from what they’re currently using? What would make them trust a newcomer over an incumbent? What do you offer that they can’t easily replicate?

“Why not them?” is uncomfortable because it forces you to acknowledge that the market isn’t empty. Other people have been working on this problem. They have head starts, existing customers, learned insights, operational experience.

What do you bring that overcomes all of that?

What “Why You” Actually Means

Let me be specific about what I’m asking when I ask “why you.”

Being a consumer of something doesn’t mean you understand how to build it. You might love using Airbnb without understanding the regulatory challenges, trust infrastructure, or unit economics that make it work. Consumption gives you one perspective. Building requires understanding the entire system.

The Hypothesis That Doesn’t Exist

Here’s where this connects to everything else founders are told to do.

The lean startup methodology tells you to build MVPs, test hypotheses, validate assumptions. Good advice. But what hypothesis are you actually testing?

Most founders think they’re testing “does this market exist?” or “will people pay for this solution?” But those aren’t the only hypotheses that matter.

There’s an implicit hypothesis underneath: “I am capable of building something people will choose over their alternatives.” If you haven’t answered “why you,” you’re testing a hypothesis that may not exist.

You might validate that a market exists while completely ignoring whether you’re the right person to serve it. You might prove people will pay for a solution without proving they’ll pay you for your solution.

The MVP process can’t save you from founder-market misfit. You can iterate on features forever and never address the fundamental question of why customers should trust you with their problem.

The Pattern I See

I’ve watched this play out many times:

A founder spots a market opportunity. They research it, validate that the problem is real, maybe even build an MVP and get some early traction. Things seem promising.

Then someone else enters the market. Someone with twenty years in the industry. Someone with existing relationships with target customers. Someone who deeply understands the problem because they’ve lived it.

Within months, the original founder is struggling. Not because their product is worse—sometimes it’s actually better. But because the newcomer has credibility they don’t. The newcomer can get meetings. The newcomer understands nuances that take years to learn. The newcomer has an answer to “why you” that the original founder never developed.

Spotting an opportunity first isn’t an advantage if you can’t capitalize on it. You’re just doing market research for someone better positioned to execute.

This Isn’t Gatekeeping

Maybe you don’t have domain experience—but you have technical skills that let you build what incumbents can’t. Maybe you don’t have industry relationships—but you have a community of potential customers already following you. Maybe you don’t have deep insight—but you have resources to acquire it faster than competitors.

There are many ways to answer “why you.” The wrong answer is having no answer at all.

And if you genuinely can’t answer the question—if you’re pursuing this only because you spotted an opportunity—you have some work to do before building anything.

The Work Before the Work

If you don’t have a good answer to “why you,” here’s what that work looks like:

Fit Is the Foundation

I recently wrote about why focus beats FOMO—why chasing trends and imitating competitors is a losing strategy. This is the same idea from a different angle.

The founders who build sustainable businesses aren’t the ones who spot opportunities. They’re the ones who find the intersection of market need and personal fit. They’re building something they’re uniquely suited to build, in a space they understand deeply, for customers they can genuinely serve.

That’s not a limitation. That’s the foundation everything else builds on.

So before you research the market, before you build the MVP, before you pitch investors or recruit a team—answer the question.

Why you?

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The startup ecosystem’s emphasis on market opportunity misses half the equation. Yes, you need a problem worth solving. But you also need to be the right person to solve it. If you can’t articulate why you—specifically you—are suited to build this business, you’re not ready to start. The work before the work is figuring out where your capabilities meet the market’s needs.