It's OK to be a solution looking for a problem, just find a big problem

I just met yesterday with a promising startup that has such a typical problem that you should be aware of it and not run into that trap.

Most entrepreneurs dream up something high on their cool-meter, and if you are a techie (bless your brain), you will discover some really beautiful technology by mere osmosis with your work and play environments. And now what?

This is where most people start to look for a problem to solve. And most of the time, the success of an idea is really not (just) the technology discovery but much more importantly the problem that the technology will solve. Budding entrepreneurs usually trip and fall here. Some samples of what VCs hear most of the time:

1. It is so great that success is obvious (yeah right)
2. You're not smart enough to understand the technology so how can you understand the g-normous problem that it solves (yawn) 
3. This technology can be applied everywhere (sure, just scrape it off the walls and take it with you on the way out) 
4. Look at all those markets this can be applied to! We will win everywhere! [insert here sweeping hand gestures that drop the coffee cup on your new carpet] 
5. We will start with this small market and then I am sure we will find something that we just cannot imagine right now (I call this the Barney Market - from the purple dinosaur in the (in)famous children series, said purple creature always encouraging kids to use their imagination)
6. We will dominated this $100M market (translation: my revenues will tightly hug the few $M line and will never get over $10M)

VCs are looking for a credible scenario for you to get to $100M revenues, because that level triggers all kinds of goodies like an IPO (remember those?), or a nice juicy M&A. This means that you have to find a $1B problem, and then state with utmost confidence that you will get 10% of the market.

So, just like you need two electrons to make a covalent bond, you need a groundbreaking technology coupled to a $1B problem to make a startup that has a chance of getting funded.