Creators: Validating Ideas, Avoiding Waste
Creators struggle to differentiate between interesting ideas and those that solve genuine user frustrations. This leads to wasted time and effort building products nobody wants, highlighting a lack of structured validation processes. The core pain is a lack of reliable feedback and a clear path to identifying truly valuable problems.
SOURCES (60)
“I do, but people rarely care how something was decided, just that they don't like what was decided and want it changed.”
“You've already diagnosed it correctly - it's the format. Live verbal brainstorming quietly rewards whoever thinks fastest out loud, so the first idea anchors the room and everyone else defaults to "I'll send it later." The fix is less about the tool and more about the sequence: have everyone generate silently and independently first (five minutes, no talking, write your ideas alone), then share and build on them. That kills the anchoring and gives your quieter people a real”
“The core problem is we're rubbish witnesses to our own conversations, we remember the feeling, not what actually happened. Winnow gives you the objective version: who interrupted, whether the same fight keeps recurring, how it shifts over time. Aimed at people (partners, family, even co-founders) who keep hitting the same wall and can't see why :)”
“I understand an exercise like this looks good on paper, but it not a very inclusive approach for neurodivergent people. I wish there were more consideration for the whole of the human experience,especially in corporate environments. There are a lot of very intelligent neurodivergent folks out there who deserve a seat at the table, but not while a timer ticks away at them.”
“Brainstorming properly requires a lot. an extremely high trust culture with high agency employees all people must be on their feet thinkers the problems must not have obvious or intractable solutions I'm working in a place without those right now and brainstorming is a largely pointless exercise even though we have markedly better tools than I've ever had available to me. My tool rec would be Miro, though. Figjam if you guys are already designers.”
“A little over a week ago Iasked a question here about marketing and was stunned by how many people assumed I was trying to promote a "shit game", or generic "shovelware". I have since seen some similar initial reactions in another subreddit. What I understood is that the conversation changes when someone understands you put serious effort and are passionate about your work. But in most cases, you don't have the time to get this point across, especially if you are not a ta”
“The finding people part is the real wall, everyone skips past it. Cold DMs feel like begging but they still beat guessing.”
“I didn’t notice any but perhaps I didn’t look hard enough. It’s called trying to learn from other’s experiences. Spending hours upon hours researching online isn’t the same as asking someone and learning from their lived experiences. If there is an informative source on running food trucks, by all means share. If you’re just here to have a whinge, move along.”
“I'm pretty new to this so I can't speak for IndieWeb, but I wouldn't blame them. People who seek independence from the social silos are usually engineers or other web-aware people. It is only natural that they want to solve the problem with the knowledge they possess and tools they know - and I think it's fine. If you look back at how internet evolved, it was always like this - the geeks and nerds coming up with something fun but naturally hard to get into for the regular folk. But then it would”
“For like three weeks straight I got the same feedback over and over for my demo. Fun, works fine, but something's missing. No meat to it. And it drove me insane because I knew the meat was in there. I spent months on it. Quick context, it's a dark fantasy shop sim. Core loop is buy stock, put it on the shelf, set your prices, make money. Pretty standard. But I didn't want to stop there so I kept piling stuff on top. Rarer items on your shelf pull in more thieves. You're never for”
“This one hits. Nothing about the message on its own is dramatic, that's exactly what makes it the real one, someone took a minute to say something honest and it landed harder than any number ever will. Save it somewhere permanent, you'll want to read it again in six months.”
“this. spent months polishing our landing page copy about features when i should've been in forums where people were literally describing the exact pain we solved, just not knowing a solution existed yet. lead with their problem, not your build, always”
“(gif to catch attention) I feel like anything I try to post whether on reddit, discords, etc just often met with disdain that I dare talk about something that I'm going to try and sell. On some game dev specific discords I get some good feedback and interest but obviously that's not really the target audience that's just other devs. How do I. get my game in front of the right people? I've been working on this game off and on for almost a year now solo and I'm pretty close to”
“I really feel this: "It's the people that refuse to describe the actual problem they are having but instead try to tell you what to do (sure sometimes you have great ideas but we need to work out what is actually happening as it's often something completely different than you think and we can't do that unless you tell us what the problem is)." It not only shows lenience on your side. You're being calm about it, but, You understand how much time is wasted on people who d”
“An app that genuinely sucks still generates feedback, angry emails, people bouncing, one-star notes. Total silence usually means not enough people ever got far enough in to have an opinion at all, and that's a reach problem, not a product verdict. I suggest you first of all put the app in front of even a few people you know, but set it up for a constructive feedback, not the encouraging one. Separately, do you mind if I dm you a couple of questions? I'm researching how founders read (or”
“Haha, fair enough. I’m probably contributing to that trend. 😄 For what it’s worth, I’m not here expecting people to tell me it’s a great idea. If the consensus is “this solves nothing,” that’s valuable feedback too.”
“The more discussions I read, the more I realize people almost never ask for a specific product. Instead they say things like: This process is so annoying. I waste hours doing this. I wish there was an easier way. It seems like our job as builders isn't to wait for feature requests, it's to recognize patterns in those frustrations and figure out the solution. Have you ever discovered a product idea from someone complaining rather than asking for a feature? submitted by /u/Ador”
“Zero feedback usually means zero discovery, not a bad product. A month with no traction on a subreddit post is genuinely just low surface area. Have you put it in front of people already building microlearning content, like L&D folks or course creators who'd use it daily? Tools like colossyan get tested by that crowd specifically, so there's a readymade audience to mine for opinions. The question isn't is it bad yet, it's have the right people seen it at all.”
“the status page on the same box thing is so painfully obvious in hindsight, yet everyone does it at least once”
“Appreciate the honesty, and no, you're def not alone in feeling like this. The issue isn't your network size, it's that any ask, even a soft one, triggers the exact spam-reflex you described. You're not wrong about what's happening - you're just fighting the wrong battle. You're sitting on a goldmine with your followers and connections. Even if you only had 100 people in your network, that's 100 people who have expressed some level of interest in YOU and your busi”
“I went through the same “I’m busy but nothing is moving” loop. I started with a janky Airtable view fed by Zapier/Make from email, IG DMs, and site chat, then layered in canned replies right inside the inbox instead of separate docs. The big unlock was tagging messages by “sales, support, time‑sink” so I could see what to automate next, not just centralize. On the Reddit side I let Pulse for Reddit quietly surface high‑intent threads for me, so I’m not refreshing subs all day just to see if some”
“the irony of a moderation tool getting removed by mods is not lost on me lol. but for real, the fact that you validated with 20+ community managers/mods is actually a huge asset you're underusing — those are the exact people who influence where a niche b2b tool spreads. instead of posting cold in random subs, go back to the ones who gave you good conversations and ask if they'd let you do a proper post (case study style, not "check out my tool") or even just mention it themselv”
“I’d ask what people do today before adding another feature. A painful workaround is stronger evidence than a polite “that sounds useful.””
“sometimes I just ask the team to poke holes in my ideas, brutal but effective.”
the thing that worked for me was making sure the person giving feedback has zero reason to be nice. my early users were friends, and for months i thought onboarding was fine…
“You have to learn how to explain your results to people that aren’t as technical as you Knowing how to do things is only part of the job, being able to confidently share your results and your opinion on those results is what lands you higher positions And trust me, this technical skill set you are learning will help you in ways you don’t even know yet. Stick with it, do not try to go the easier route”
“There have already been a ton of great suggestions here, but I would also suggest that if you do not have a process in place that monitors how happy your customers are, I would look into doing that. I know a lot of people who are very successful business people who have grown their businesses, but they have a very small amount of repeat customers because they’re workmanship and workers are not as good as they think they are. But, most of them don’t care because all they care about is the money g”
“This!! OP listen to this. You will never have enough conversation with user, there are always more conversations to be had with users”
“I try to share a few problems per week on gotaprob.com to help people find business ideas, maybe you can find it useful”
“boring tech wins way more often than people want to admit. every time I picked the shiny thing, the bill came due 6 months later when the docs were stale, the package changed direction, and nobody else on the team wanted to touch it.”
“It's a delicate balance. I have learned to narrow my scope: is the thing directly relevant to the conversation at hand? If so, go ahead. HOWEVER. Your default tone needs to be positive, collaborative, and thoughtful. If you have good leadership, they will give you the grace to voice your concerns and expertise, but that grace will run out if you are not conscientious, respectful, and helpful. In practical terms, that means instead of "No." It should be "I would prefer..."”
“I've been in this group for a few months now and I've seen some really good ideas get put out here. Some really eye opening moments at that. I was wondering, how helpful has this subreddit been as a community to you? How much have you learned over the years with help from this community? And what are some of the biggest things you have taken away and the best advice you have received? submitted by /u/Traditional-Road-164 [link] [comments]”
“😂 I probably wouldn't go as far as treating it as 99% useless, but I do think frustration is underrated. The sessions where I get the most value are usually the ones where I keep asking "What's wrong with this?", Why are you confident? and "What would a skeptic say?" That's when it starts acting more like a reviewer than a cheerleader, and that's the mode I trust the most.”
“https://preview.redd.it/6edasi8xwfdh1.png?width=858&format=png&auto=webp&s=75a0e97de9914f3645f55c2c51e4c7f44909a4d9 For years the advice was "brainstorm 50 ideas and pick one." That made sense when nobody could see the market in real time. Now the data exists: what's rising this hour, which angles are taken, which small channels are overperforming their baseline. The screenshot is me asking my advisor what's moving in tech right now — it answers with live signals, a”
“I had this issue in the past where one of the founders was all over the damn place and would gaslight when someone would bring up that the decision was already made and the context. This might not be applicable, but I made a quick one-pager with the information you would need as backup if it were revisited. Not a huge document, just the reason, tradeoffs, who was in the room, and other solutions presented and why they were decided against. Something tangible. For this case, I would have him send”
“Yesterday I posted about how most people here build things nobody wants, skip validation, and wonder why they're at $0 MRR. 400 upvotes. Someone immediately asked me to link my best seller to prove I wasn't full of shit. Fair. So here's what I'm actually building, and you can tell me if I'm guilty of the same thing. The problem I kept running into: Cold calling is brutal not because of the calls themselves. It's because every single call starts at zero. No context, no tru”
“I really like this a lot. I especially love the no-signup piece to it. My issue was that after I created my event the UI/UX got really busy. I would really think about how to simplify the experience.”
“I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated and lacking feedback. I like the concept! From my perspective, I love to see the app in action, so a clickable demo, some screen by screen shots, description of features, etc. are all really helpful in deciding if an app is worth even registering for, even if it's free. I think people have gotten wary of providing their contact info, just to see if they might be interested in an app or service. If I may self-promote for a moment, take a look at how”
“They're portfolio pieces disguised as products, the goal was never usability, it was "look what I can build" for other devs and recruiters. Judging them on UX is like judging a concept car on fuel economy. The actual problem is when agencies sell that aesthetic to a client who needs a normal business site. That's where it stops being art and starts being a real usability cost someone's paying for.”
“Refreshing to read your post - it is the untold truth nobody wants to talk about. And yes it is anyoing to read such posts 10 times a day - finding something useful is like digging for gold on reddit.”
It sounds like it’s worth a conversation. DM me if you like.
“Expecting users to take a degree of ownership over their workstation, in so far as they know their software better than we do, and they know what theyre doing on the machine better than we do, is perfectly reasonable and not "bad people skills". It isnt the 90s. 75%+ of almost all user babses for everyone here has grown up around computers. Its reasonable to expect them to be able to remember to reboot it at least once a week. Its reasonable to expect them to know how to troubleshoot i”
“I mean, i hate the advice of throwing out metrics for everything (where some people feel the need to makeup), but come on. That second version has like 0 information. I would toss it out in an instant. “Designed a microservice using kafka to distribute data”. May as well just write “wrote code in Java” as a main bullet point.”