FOUNDER PERSPECTIVE
Good Technology Starts with Better Questions
Understanding the problem is part of building the right solution.
By Brian Holman · Founder & CEO, Dezota LLC
One of the most consequential decisions in a technology project happens before anyone chooses a platform or designs a screen: deciding which problem deserves to be solved. That sounds obvious until you consider how easily a proposed feature becomes the problem statement. “We need a dashboard” already assumes part of the answer. “What is someone trying to understand, and what is preventing them from understanding it?” opens a much more useful conversation.
My career has given me opportunities to approach that question from different directions. Studio J brought software into a creative activity with a very human purpose: preserving memories and telling stories. That context changes how you think about the product. Technical capability matters, but so does whether a person can use it comfortably to make something meaningful. A feature earns its place when it helps that experience, rather than simply demonstrating what the technology can do.
Work on the Church’s global banking modernization presented a different kind of complexity. An established financial system carries years of business rules, obligations, and operating experience. Understanding why something works a particular way is essential before deciding how it should change. A rule that appears unnecessarily complicated may be answering a question you have not yet learned to ask. Modernization requires judgment about what to preserve as well as what to improve.
These experiences inform how I want to build Dezota’s next chapter. Before debating a solution, I want us to be able to describe the need in plain language. Who is trying to accomplish something? What information do they have? Where do they get stuck? What would a useful outcome look like? If we cannot explain those things clearly, selecting more sophisticated technology is unlikely to resolve the uncertainty. It may simply make an unclear idea more expensive to revise.
Better questions also require a culture in which people can challenge an answer. As a founder and the architect of WealthProof, I bring convictions about where the product should go. I also need to be willing to discover that an assumption behind those convictions is incomplete. The company I want to build makes room for someone to say, “I understand the proposed solution, but I am not sure we have understood the problem.” That should be a contribution we value. Leadership includes making it possible for a good question to change the plan.
For WealthProof, this means keeping the purpose of financial understanding in view as we evaluate product ideas. We should be able to explain how an idea helps someone make sense of information, recognize a limitation, or ask a more informed question. Some ideas will justify their complexity. Others may be interesting and still belong outside our current focus. I believe that discipline is especially important early in a company’s life, when attention is limited and every addition creates something else to maintain. Asking better questions helps us decide where our effort will be most useful.