I stopped brainstorming startup ideas — this worked better for me
For a long time, my “idea generation” process was:
• notes
• tweets
• random thoughts
• endless lists
It felt productive, but it wasn’t grounding.
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with a different approach:
starting from real user frustration, not ideas.
Instead of asking “what should I build?”, I look at:
• what people are repeatedly confused about
• where decisions stall
• what questions never get a clear answer
What surprised me most is how repeatable these problems are across different communities.
I’m now building a small tool (Problem Miner ) around this approach because it helped me personally stop guessing and start validating with more confidence.
scans real conversations from communities (like Reddit), then use a small pipeline to:
1. detect whether someone is expressing a real frustration (not advice or promotion),
2. summarize the core problem in plain language,
3. tag it with context (who it affects, domain, severity, willingness to pay),
4. store it so patterns can be spotted across many similar complaints.(clustering)
The goal isn’t to generate ideas — it’s to surface repeatable pain people already care about.
Curious how others here source ideas:
• do you start from problems?
• or do you refine ideas first and validate later?
I believe most good ideas tend to be iterations of the past. Rarely do you find truly unique ideas. Find a process or problem that still is solved with old terrible software and rebuild it with new technology. That is 90% of SaaS
This mirrors what I've found building in the demo/onboarding space. The best signal isn't "I wish X existed" — it's watching where users consistently get stuck or confused in existing products.
One pattern I've noticed: the same frustration shows up differently across contexts. In SaaS it's "users don't understand our product", in support it's "we keep answering the same questions", in sales it's "prospects drop off during trials." Same underlying pain, different words.
For distinguishing temporary annoyance vs real pain: I look for workarounds. If someone has built a hacky solution or is manually doing something repetitive, that's persistent pain. Complaints with no attempted solution are often just venting.
Good progress! Looking for actual problems instead of building ideas you think have potential is a lesson I've had to learn myself as well. Wishing you luck!
This resonates a lot. I’ve noticed that “idea lists” feel productive but rarely reduce uncertainty. Starting from repeated confusion or stalled decisions feels much closer to truth.
I’ve had better luck when I frame things as “what are people already trying to solve badly?” rather than “what should I build?” Communities are full of the same questions asked in different words.
Your focus on filtering out advice/promos and clustering real frustration is interesting that’s usually the noisy part. Curious: how do you distinguish between temporary annoyance vs persistent pain worth paying for?
I usually start from problems.
Right now I’m exploring why many small but profitable businesses still lose money quietly month after month.
Talking to accountants and founders first before thinking of any solution.
I am going to validate my Idea first.
This is a great reframing. Starting from repeatable frustration instead of abstract ideas removes a lot of false positives early.
I’ve noticed the same thing the moment you look for where people get stuck or confused repeatedly, patterns show up fast. How you differentiate between a loud one-off complaint and a problem that’s truly worth building around.
I find ideas without having to think about how to find them! Just do what you enjoy; no need to rack your brain trying to come up with anything! A simple walk in the park, a bike ride, or even the most basic things we haven't thought about before. I mean, I started noticing a lot more people, trees, and small objects around me.
Ideas just find you!