A complaint is not a SaaS idea. The workaround is the real signal.
I analyzed a large set of Reddit conversations while working on a research product.
The surprising part: Most “SaaS ideas” are weak.
A complaint is not enough. A popular thread is not enough. Even “I wish there was a tool for this” is not always enough. The stronger signal is the workaround.
If someone is already using a spreadsheet, a messy Zapier setup, manual copy-paste, a half-broken tool, or a process they hate but keep using, that tells you more than a generic complaint.
It means the pain already has gravity. They are already trying to escape it.
That changed how I think about idea validation.
Now I look less for: “Would people like this?”
And more for: “What are they already doing badly today because the pain is annoying enough?”
Curious how others validate this. When you look at a SaaS idea, what do you trust more: complaints, willingness to pay, existing tools, workarounds, or actual customer conversations?
Workarounds were exactly how I validated my current project. I noticed YouTube creators were manually copy-pasting their scripts into ChatGPT for feedback, spending 45 minutes writing descriptions at midnight after editing, and checking competitor channels one by one every week. Nobody was complaining loudly — they were just doing it badly and accepting it as part of the process. That was the signal. Built a tool that automates all three of those specific workarounds. The people doing the messy manual version are your most motivated early users because they've already proven they care enough to do it the hard way.
I feel like customer conversation is the basic for all other angles, only through the proper conversation with real customers group can we dig the fact under the surface.And I also realize that many founders do customer conversation in the wrong way, the intuitively seek compliments, ask for generic behavior and future commitment.So this is to say, We have to practice those conversations before it really counts, especially if the customer group is niche and hard to gather.
This is a great lens. Complaints measure frustration, but workarounds measure commitment. If someone is already investing time to solve a problem badly, they've effectively proven the pain is worth paying to eliminate.
Exactly. I like that framing: complaints measure frustration, workarounds measure commitment.
The part I’m still trying to judge is where the line is between “annoying but tolerated” and “painful enough to pay for.”
Do you usually trust time spent on a workaround, or do you only treat it as strong validation once money is already being spent?
I think the interesting part is actually one step before that.
The same workaround can justify very different conclusions depending on what you believe it's evidence of.
That's the implication I was thinking about.
Happy to explain what I mean if it's useful. What's the best email to reach you on?
This is such a powerful reframing. Most founders chase complaints but miss the real signal: what is someone already doing badly because the current pain is worth tolerating? That spreadsheet they're manually maintaining, that half-broken Zapier setup, that repetitive copy-paste - those are screaming that the problem has gravity. The insight about pain already having gravity is the game changer. It means you're not betting on desire to change, you're following the trail of someone already trying to escape. Have you noticed a pattern in how many simultaneous workarounds someone juggles before it hits the critical mass for conversion?
Yeah, that effort/money ranking makes sense.
The pattern I keep coming back to is small teams stitching together spreadsheets, exports, Zapier/Make, and manual review for boring ops workflows.
One example: invoice/payment matching. A client pays a lump sum or forgets the reference, then someone has to compare bank exports, invoices, emails, and notes to figure out what was actually paid. The workaround is usually “export everything to a sheet and manually reconcile it.”
That feels stronger to me than a generic complaint because the business is already spending time on it, and sometimes already paying for tools that still don’t fully solve the workflow.
I’m still trying to separate “annoying but tolerable” from “painful enough to switch/pay,” though. That’s the hard part.