We realized finding real startup ideas is harder than building them
While working on side projects, one thing became very clear:
Coming up with a good idea is way harder than actually building the product.
Most places where you look for ideas are either:
Too generic (“build a SaaS tool”)
Already saturated
Or just trends with no real validation
At the same time, there’s a lot of real problems being shared daily across the internet:
Reddit discussions
Developer forums
Founder communities
But they’re scattered everywhere.
So instead of searching for ideas… we started looking for problems.
That led to a simple concept: 👉 A place where you can explore real-world problems + startup ideas in one place
Something that helps you:
Discover ideas based on actual user pain
Validate if a problem is worth solving
Get inspiration without random guessing
Been experimenting with this approach and it feels way more practical than traditional “idea hunting”.
Platform is called Startives.com.
Curious — how do you guys usually come up with startup ideas?
Do you start with a problem or jump straight into building?
You’re absolutely right! For indie hackers and solo founders, identifying a genuine need that users are willing to pay for is more important than simply building a product.
That’s why I’m building WantForge—it helps indie hackers and solo founders validate whether their ideas address real pain points and needs within minutes, so they can avoid spending months on blind development only to launch a product that no one uses.
This is such an underrated problem.
Feels like a lot of people focus on ‘ideas’ instead of identifying repeatable problems they already understand deeply.
Curious how you’re approaching that distinction?
stack ranked in order of difficulty:
1. brand positing / messaging
2. marketing (even if u have cash, the above will cruel you if done badly)
3. setting up legals, drop shipping, etc (if not a saas)
4. idea
5. building/manufacturing the thing
To be honest, building is the easiest part. The hard parts are finding a good idea and marketing (getting your first users).
"Coming up with a good idea is way harder than actually building the product", that's the line most people miss until they've built three things nobody needed. You flipped the sequence: problem first, then idea. That's the only order that reduces the guesswork.
It's nice genuinely I saw it