Real problems people complain about online, pulled every morning and scored out of 100. Build, validate, or skip. How scoring works
this started as a side experiment and turned into probably the most useful thing i've ever done for validating ideas. i've been cataloguing complaints from reddit, hacker news, forums, anywhere people vent about tools they use or processes they hate. 700+ entries over the past 6 months. each one scored by pain level. at some point i noticed something. certain phrases kept showing up in the threads that eventually led to real products people paid for. other threads had tons of upvotes but zero commercial potential. the language was different. here are the 5 phrases that consistently predict willingness to pay. phrase 1: "i've been doing this manually for \[time period\]" this is the strongest one. when someone says they've been doing something manually for months or years, they've already built the workflow. they understand the value of having it automated. they don't need to be educated on why your tool exists. they've been waiting for it. i found 40+ threads with this exact phrasing and almost every one maps to a tool someone is already paying for. phrase 2: "is there a cheaper alternative to \[expensive tool\]" this tells you three things at once. the category is proven (someone already built it), the buyer exists (they're already paying), and the price point is wrong (there's a gap). you don't need to invent anything. just build the simpler, cheaper version. i tracked 30+ of these and the pattern is wild. the tools people want cheaper alternatives to are almost always enterprise software being awkwardly used by small businesses. phrase 3: "i can't believe there's no \[simple thing\]" disbelief is a strong signal. when someone is genuinely shocked that a solution doesn't exist, the problem is real and they're ready to pay. these threads also tend to get the most engagement because other people share the same disbelief. social proof built into the complaint. phrase 4: "this is overkill for what i need" i mentioned this before but it deserves its own entr
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
i do mobile dev freelance. android mostly. it's not easy took me almost a year to get to a point where i had semi regular clients and even now there are months where i'm refreshing my inbox more than i'm writing code. about 3 months ago i'm on a call with a guy i'd been doing small gigs for. he runs a meditation app, around 40k downloads. i'd just finished patching a bug where guided audio sessions were cutting out mid track on android 12 devices something to do with background process limits and how his media player service wasn't requesting the right foreground notification. small fix, maybe 4 hours of actual work, $320 invoice. we're wrapping up and he mentions offhand that a friend of his who runs a habit tracker app keeps complaining about bugs slipping into production. says his friend doesn't have a QA person, just a solo dev who writes the features and tries to test what he can before pushing. i said i'll talk to him. got on a call. the guy's a solo founder with one contractor dev. the app's not huge maybe 15k users, but it's growing and he's getting bad reviews because stuff keeps breaking after updates. things like the streak counter resetting when you change timezones, or the reminder notification showing the wrong habit name because the list order shifts after you delete one. his dev was doing all testing manually. open the app, tap through the main flows, eyeball it, ship. no automation at all. and every release was this stressful thing where they'd push an update and just wait to see if users complain. now here's the thing. i know testing. every dev knows testing. i've written espresso tests, i've dealt with appium on a contract job once and hated it. So the problem is it's tedious and for small teams it always gets deprioritized because there's always a feature to build or a bug to fix first. so i looked at his setup. the app was kotlin, single activity, jetpack compose for most of the ui. pretty standard. the flows that kept breaking were onboa
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
The manual to automated handoff in outbound contact discovery is messier than most playbooks admit. Clay is great for enrichment workflows but it's only as good as the data sources feeding it, and the moment you're targeting anything outside SaaS or enterprise tech the waterfall starts returning empty columns. The other thing is that "automating" contact discovery usually still means building a workflow that requires a human to QA the output before sequences run, because the cost of bad data showing up in an active campaign is worse than the time you saved on sourcing, so what does the stack actually look like for teams doing this at volume without a full time data ops person?
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
to those of you struggling with marketing for your B2B offer, heres what’s been working for my clients in 2026 so far. Step one. make a simple landing page for a webinar. Just a thumbnail image, webinar title, and a working optin form. Ask for multiple data points like company name, job title, etc. Use some recaptcha solution to prevent spam submissions. After successful optin, just show a screen like “webinar ended, we’ll send a replay when available!” Step two. Make 15-50 variations of this with various webinar topics and titles. You never know what resonates most with people in your industry until you test, and you’ll waste countless hours & resources filming and producing webinars nobody will ever watch. So test titles first then thumbnails second. Even the wording of the webinar headline can result in either $16.00 or $2.50 per qualified optin. The worst and dumbest thing you can do is burn ad spend forcing people to watch something they have no interest in. Step three. Run paid ads to test which webinar topics/titles perform best. We run ads across Meta, LinkedIn, Google/YouTube, and Reddit. (Even TikTok for some industries). Algorithms can find your target audience even if it’s super niche. We’ve even done webinars targeted at “Owners of independent pharmacies” or “CTOs at tech companies with 300+ headcount” or “owner operators of remodeling companies on the east coast”. If your webinar title is relevant, and your ad copy is targeted, you reach the right people. Simple enough. Those people click, and then algorithms show to more people like that. Step four. Take your best performing webinar title & thumbnail and actually script and film the webinar. This is by far the biggest bottleneck for most people. They keep restarting and never actually film the thing. If it’s easier we’ve had a lot of success with ultra realistic AI voiceovers and the watch times can actually be higher. Aim to write a transcript that fills about 20-30 minutes. Then do a
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
to those of you struggling with marketing for your B2B SaaS, heres what’s been working for my clients in 2026 so far. Step one. make a simple landing page for a webinar. Just a thumbnail image, webinar title, and a working optin form. Ask for multiple data points like company name, job title, etc. Use some recaptcha solution to prevent spam submissions. After successful optin, just show a screen like “webinar ended, we’ll send a replay when available!” Step two. Make 15-50 variations of this with various webinar topics and titles. You never know what resonates most with people in your industry until you test, and you’ll waste countless hours & resources filming and producing webinars nobody will ever watch. So test titles first then thumbnails second. Even the wording of the webinar headline can result in either $16.00 or $2.50 per qualified optin. The worst and dumbest thing you can do is burn ad spend forcing people to watch something they have no interest in. Step three. Run paid ads to test which webinar topics/titles perform best. We run ads across Meta, LinkedIn, Google/YouTube, and Reddit. (Even TikTok for some industries). Algorithms can find your target audience even if it’s super niche. We’ve even done webinars targeted at “Owners of independent pharmacies” or “CTOs at tech companies with 300+ headcount” or “owner operators of remodeling companies on the east coast”. If your webinar title is relevant, and your ad copy is targeted, you reach the right people. Simple enough. Those people click, and then algorithms show to more people like that. Step four. Take your best performing webinar title & thumbnail and actually script and film the webinar. This is by far the biggest bottleneck for most people. They keep restarting and never actually film the thing. If it’s easier we’ve had a lot of success with ultra realistic AI voiceovers and the watch times can actually be higher. Aim to write a transcript that fills about 20-30 minutes. Then do a
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
I've been deep in SEO for years (it's literally what my SaaS does), and one of the most common issues I see founders deal with is this frustrating Google Search Console status: **"Crawled – currently not indexed."** It means Google visited your page, read it, and said "nah." Not a technical error. A deliberate rejection. After looking at thousands of websites through [our platform](https://blogseo.io), here's what I've learned about why it happens and how to fix it. **First, understand what it actually means** There are two similar-sounding statuses that people confuse: * "Discovered – not indexed" = Google knows your URL exists but hasn't even visited it yet. That's a crawling problem. * "Crawled – not indexed" = Google visited, read your content, and rejected it. That's a quality/relevance problem. The fixes are completely different, so make sure you're looking at the right one. **The biggest reasons Google rejects your content in 2026** **1. The quality bar has gone way up.** With AI content flooding the web, Google has gotten extremely picky. An estimated 95% of URLs never get indexed. Thin content, generic AI output with no original insight, and duplicate/near-duplicate pages all get tossed. I learned this the hard way. When I first started generating content with AI, indexing rates were terrible. The "give a prompt to an LLM and publish" approach just doesn't work. You need deep competitive analysis, search intent matching, and genuine expertise layered on top. **2. Weak internal linking (most underrated factor).** If your own website doesn't link to a page, why would Google think it matters? Orphan pages (pages only discoverable through your sitemap with no internal links pointing to them) are significantly more likely to get this status. Quick trick: search `site:yourdomain.com "keyword of non-indexed page"` to find existing pages you can add links from. **3. Low site authority.** New sites publishing 30 articles/month from day one will face a
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
As a new entrepreneur myself, I've often heard that the biggest solution to everything is just to "work harder". But then I realized that if success were a linear relationship to your effort, then so many more people would be successful. But that's just not the case. I always wished there was a straightforward platform where I could ask all the "stupid" questions and quickly get advice. Hope this post helps a lot of people. Newbies, ask your questions. Seniors, reply with your best wisdom.
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
I've been lurking in this sub for a while and I keep seeing the same post over and over, just with different product names. "Launched 3 weeks ago. Less than 20 users signed up. Zero paying customers. What am I doing wrong?" Or "Built for 8 months. Finally launched. Crickets. Help" Or the most painful one: "Gave it away free to 50 people. Asked them to pay $29/month. All 50 ghosted me." I'm not writing this to be harsh. I'm writing this because I've watched talented technical founders waste 12–18 months of their lives on a problem that has a clear, learnable solution, and nobody in this sub is talking about it directly. So here it is. # The real reason you have no paying customers isn't your product, your pricing, or your landing page. It's that you're trying to sell to people who don't yet trust you, don't yet know you, and haven't told you with their own words that they have the problem you're solving badly enough to pay money to fix it. You built something. Then you went looking for someone to sell it to. That order is the problem. # What the amateur approach actually looks like (most of you will recognize yourselves here) You had an idea. You built it, or you're building it right now. You put up a landing page. You posted on Product Hunt, posted here on reddit, maybe posted on Twitter. You got some upvotes, some "congrats on the launch" comments, maybe a few hundred free signups. Then silence. So you started tweaking. Changed the headline. Lowered the price. Added a free tier. Posted again. Maybe ran some Google ads. Still nothing. You're iterating on the wrong variable. The problem isn't the headline. The problem is you don't actually know — with evidence, not assumption — who is in enough pain to pay you, what words they use to describe that pain, and what would need to be true for them to hand over a credit card to a founder they've never heard of. You skipped the step where you find that out. What that step actually looks like Before your first
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
I have built a platform which has connectors to most of the services used by companies/businesses. Connectors include Slack, Teams, Jira, Confluence, Notion, etc Now I have AI agents which can connect to these databases and give you info, perform tasks for you directly from slack or teams or any chat interface Tasks include fetching info across Jira, Confluence and other sources, creating/updating Confluence Pages based on the context in a thread or the context given by the user, creating/editing Jira tickets, workflows like onboarding, password reset, etc I know a lot of companies need this because their data is spread across platforms which might not be from a single vendor like Notion, Confluence and Jira or some other combination, and my solution gives them info from all the platforms in one place. I want to actually reach companies who need it, I don't know how to do that. I would really appreciate any guidance on this.
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
I used to think my problem was marketing. Every time I'd build something and it flopped, I'd tell myself the same story. "I just need to get better at distribution." So I'd go deeper. More SEO. More cold emails. More content. More strategies from people on Twitter who definitely had it all figured out. Nothing worked. I kept blaming the marketing. Then after about 3000 hours of this across multiple failed startups, I realized. My marketing wasn't the problem. My ideas were just trash. The biggest one was called VimFuse. A learning platform for YouTubers. I spent months on it. The product was solid. I was proud of it. And nobody wanted it. Not because they didn't know about it. Because the problem I was solving wasn't painful enough for anyone to actually pay for. That failure broke something in my brain in a good way. I stopped asking "how do I market this better" and started asking "should I even be building this in the first place." Here's what I learned: **If your idea sounds amazing and nobody is doing it, that's a warning sign.** There's a concept called a tarpit idea. It sounds brilliant. Nobody seems to be doing it. Doesn't seem too hard. You think you've stumbled on something everyone else missed. You haven't. Hundreds of people had that same idea. They all tried. They all drowned quietly. The reason nobody is doing it isn't because nobody thought of it. It's because it doesn't work. The ideas that actually make money? Boring. Hard. Already have competition. Gusto does payroll. Stripe processes payments. Dropbox wasn't even original. They just did cloud storage with less friction than everyone else. Boring as hell. Worth billions. **Start with pain. Not a technology.** Most people come up with ideas like this: "AI is cool, what if I built an AI tool that does X?" There's no problem there! You're starting with a trend and trying to reverse-engineer a use case. That's building a solution and then going out looking for people who need it. Flip it.
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
I got a newish job at a non-profit and our comms team is just two people, so whenever we need ads for upcoming events its always last-minute. I feel like half my life is spent scrambling to make something presentable. Is there an ad maker you all swear by that helps speed things up? I got the go-ahead to try out stuff for video ads and I'm looking for suggestions. I've seen some a i tools like HeyGen mentioned and I saw Billo in another subreddit but not sure of the price. Hit me with your reccs. Bonus if it's not super pricey and noob friendly!
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
This one is almost too effective to share. Every SaaS has unhappy customers. Those customers go to Reddit and vent publicly. And those complaints are your best sales opportunities. **Here's why this is so powerful:** these people already understand the problem space (no education needed), already have budget allocated (they're paying a competitor), are actively unhappy (ready to switch), and are publicly asking for alternatives. That's the highest-intent prospect you'll ever find. Higher than any ad click. Higher than any cold email response. **The method:** **Step 1:** List your top 5 competitors. **Step 2:** Search Reddit for "\[competitor name\]" alternative OR "\[competitor name\]" issue OR "\[competitor name\]" pricing **Step 3:** You'll find dozens of frustrated users describing exactly what they wish was different. **Step 4:** Write a genuinely helpful comment. Don't trash the competitor that looks petty. Instead, acknowledge their frustration and offer objective alternatives: "I've used \[competitor\] too and had similar issues with X. Depending on what matters most to you, here are 3 alternatives I've tested: \[tool A\] for Y, \[tool B\] for Z, and \[your tool\] if you specifically need W." **The key:** be honest and balanced. Recommend competitors when they're genuinely better for that use case. People trust someone who gives objective advice over someone who only pushes their own product. **My results from last month:** 3 customers in one month (high ticket niche), started this strategy since Jan. 2026 + this will compound over time the more I find posts to comment. The hardest part is finding these conversations across 50+ subreddits consistently. I use AI Reddit tools like Reppit AI to monitor competitor mentions in real-time, which surfaces opportunities I'd never find manually. Try it this week: search your #1 competitor's name + "alternative" on Reddit. I guarantee you'll find warm prospects over time, as these posts already rank on goog
Reddit6mo agoToolBusiness
ProblemHunt8mo agoToolBusiness
ProblemHunt8mo agoToolBusiness
ProblemHunt8mo agoToolBusiness
ProblemHunt8mo agoToolBusiness
ProblemHunt8mo agoToolBusiness
ProblemHunt8mo agoToolBusiness