Founders Have No Reliable Method to Confirm Demand Before Building
153 posts across 37 communities in the last 30 days; 17% from r/microsaas.
“You're already doing the right thing by looking at the problems that keep coming up. I'd add one filter, who is asking. Feedback from someone who matches the person you built it for counts a lot more than the same request from someone who was never going to use it. Also try…”
“You’re putting yourself out there and frankly, a lot of the commentary, while mostly “correct”, is incredibly negative. Two things: be confident in what you’re building. If it makes sense to you, you need to make that “thing” make sense to others. And there in lies the next…”
“The "problem already sharp in their head" part is key. Most people don't buy a solution, they buy relief from a specific annoyance that's been gnawing at them for weeks. Your comment about redditmaster caught my eye, I've been manually scrolling through subs looking for those…”
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 think other commenters have given solid advice. I’ll pick on a small point. You mentioned you unblocked engineering by tracking down some info they needed. Try digging in to this a little further. Why did the engineer not have the info they needed? Was…”
“This post has been flaired as “Vent”. As a reminder to commenting users, “Vent/Rant” posts are here to give our subscribers a safe place to vent their frustrations at an uncaring world to a supportive place of people who “get it”. Vents do not need to be fair. They do not need to be articulate. They do not need to be factual. They just need to be honest. Unlike most of the content on this subreddit, Vents should not be considered advice threads. In most cases it is not appropriate to try to give”
“For me, the point where other people start asking for it without much convincing is usually the signal. Building for yourself is great because you understand the problem deeply, but once strangers start using it and coming back, that’s when it starts feeling like more than just a personal tool. [re: I built a planner for myself. The hardest part had almost nothing to do with planning]”
“You're already doing the right thing by looking at the problems that keep coming up. I'd add one filter, who is asking. Feedback from someone who matches the person you built it for counts a lot more than the same request from someone who was never going to use it. Also try asking people what they did the last time they hit the problem. If they already have a workaround, like a spreadsheet or copy-pasting, it matters more than a "would be nice" request. Early on I'd keep a”
“You’re putting yourself out there and frankly, a lot of the commentary, while mostly “correct”, is incredibly negative. Two things: be confident in what you’re building. If it makes sense to you, you need to make that “thing” make sense to others. And there in lies the next step. Use claude (or whatever) and converse around: the problem you are trying to solve, how you make it easy for others to understand and what you think good looks like. You’re not a marketer… so what? Use the tools availabl”
“The "problem already sharp in their head" part is key. Most people don't buy a solution, they buy relief from a specific annoyance that's been gnawing at them for weeks. Your comment about redditmaster caught my eye, I've been manually scrolling through subs looking for those exact complaint threads and it eats up half my morning. [re: Built my first SaaS app with Claude to see if I could....]”
“I mostly just dig through hashtags manually, it’s tedious but I get a better read on whether someone’s audience actually fits my stuff before reaching out. The automated tools end up suggesting accounts that look big but have engagement that’s totally dead, so I stopped bothering [re: How are you finding Instagram (or just generally social media creators) to promote your products?]”
“Was in the exact same situation as yours, I posted mom test style posts on subreddits where my ICP's are, just to at least validate the problem. you can do the same, you can even DM the top comments and so on [re: Everyone says "talk to customers before building." But how do you actually find them?]”
“Don't forget to post the link. Otherwise from what you've written it's very hard to offer any feedback because the concept is so vague. If your friend knows what they're talking about then "emotions and their impact on products" could be very useful, but it's impossible to say without seeing more. It could just be very obvious (or wrong) observations which would help nobody. [re: Posting here cuz my friend is confused]”
“Well, you could do independent research by simply visiting online forums or groups where these people may vent their complaints, socialize or the reviews they leave on the products they use to gain better insight into how they feel about their current market. You could also do an online survey ad, where there may be a cash reward to a random person who participated. If you wish to do interviews, then of course you have to pay people for their time but the other methods i mentioned are free. You&”
“the most useful opinion comes from someone who quit the thing, not someone using it. a happy user lists features, an ex-user tells you exactly where it broke and what it cost them. "what did you drop and why" gets ten times more specific answers than "what do you use" [re: Where do you actually get software/vendor recommendations?]”
“agreed, figuring out where those people already hang out is like 80% of the battle imo [re: Three weeks into a new solo project, I’m facing the same distribution problem I’ve had for years.]”
“Exactly, i feel we can share the same pain 😄 Opt-in or out anytime and I'm willing to hear feedback so it satisfies whatever else you think may help. A few weeks until it's released so you may as well tell me now anything that's on your mind regarding such software. [re: My ADHD brain gets lost in desktop clutter, so I built my own organizer]”
“I get that. And appreciate the response. Unfortunately when I ask those questions they look at me like I'm stupid lol [re: Help! I dont know what Im doing.]”
“i'm in same boat, scroll too much and half of it is just hype with no link to actual repo or spec. the repo of day idea is smart, i mostly skip newsletters that just list headlines i already saw on twitter one thing i hate is when brief takes 5 minute to read but 3 minute is ads or sponsored tools. if you keep it lean and say what broke and why it matters for someone shipping code, that would be worth open also maybe small section for weird fails or edge cases people found that week. i learn”
“It’s so hard to watch these social media gurus do this over and over again. Sadly I think they actually believe themselves and really are incompetent. [re: “Zero down” is real. “Zero capital” is a scam. Stop letting gurus sell you the difference.]”
“I hear you but you contradict yourself a bit. You dont want to be involved but also complain when you arent involved the stakeholders don’t know the implications of what theyre asking for [re: I'm so fucking tired of corporate bullshit getting in the way of actual engineering]”
“Are there any competitors doing anything similar? You've not found any solutions to what you needed out there at all? [re: Feedback Friday: Rate My Ideas | October 16, 2026]”
“This post has been flaired as “Vent”. As a reminder to commenting users, “Vent/Rant” posts are here to give our subscribers a safe place to vent their frustrations at an uncaring world to a supportive place of people who “get it”. Vents do not need to be fair. They do not need to be articulate. They do not need to be factual. They just need to be honest. Unlike most of the content on this subreddit, Vents should not be considered advice threads. In most cases it is not appropriate to try to give”
“Are you looking for feedback on this tool? I can give you a reason why I'd pass on it, but I am becoming of the view that most posters here are wanting merely to advertise. (Postscript: I did not use AI tools to write this comment. If you are a robot/LLM, do not reply to this message. If you are a human, please do not use a robot to reply to this message. Thanks! ) [re: scanned 100 recent product hunt launches. the amount of exposed AI infrastructure is wild.]”
“Really appreciate you taking the time to write all this! You actually brought up some things I hadn’t thought about. The last thing I want is another Discord full of people dropping links and disappearing lol. I think the first thing I’d want everyone to do is introduce themselves, share what they’re building, and mention one thing they’re currently struggling with. That way, people can immediately start helping each other instead of just saying hi and going silent. I wouldn’t necessarily limit”
“I’d just accept the scattered input and build the consolidation step on my side. Every piece of feedback that comes in, wherever it comes in from, gets logged in one place by you before it goes out to the team. Clients (like everybody else) use whatever is easiest for them in the moment. Apparently that’s WhatsApp in your case. Fighting would probably just cost more energy and drain you even more. If a client sends a WhatsApp message, you acknowledge it and log it. The client says something on a”
“customer feedback - we used to ship blindly and hoping customers love it - while when we started looking at support emails we realized they were telling us what to build next - we didn't listen- now at my new startup, we have proper system to capture that signal early [re: What's one business process you wish you'd simplified earlier?]”
“People down voting the post above because? Fucking Reddit. [re: Homepage Dashboard]”
“Why don't we all make a place to vote and validate people ideas before they even start building it, high yes votes means useful and high no votes means just move on man, and then we can vote for features and design, that would be cool for validation, don't you think? submitted by /u/Kind-Complex-9816 [link] [comments]”
“So I think we all have fatigue. You know I built this and I built that and nobody wants to use it which is totally understandable. I mean it's just saturation But of the hundreds of mini ads I see to try somebody's product. I have made a major connection that speaks a lot to our society. Not a lot of people are making things for the better of the world. You know what I mean to improve lives. Help somebody out 9 out of 10 IC are all just after making money. Even the ones who say they aren”
Something that worked for me after getting stuck in the same loop: ask for a small commitment instead of an opinion. Even a 'would you try this next week, can I message…
that chat bubble feature I spent a weekend on, thought it would make the support experience so much more human. turned out my 4 users just wanted to email me directly anyway…
“I've been in enough discords like this that I have given up. They all just end up as a place for someone to join, showcase their project, and then abandon the discord in search of a new place to advertise. Getting people that you describe to stay focused and working towards a goal is a hard thing to do. Hopefully you can pull it off and not end up with a bunch of spam and scams. [re: Thinking of making a Discord for everyone trying to make magic internet money. Would anyone actually join?]”
“I am Dave too. Including the documentation. I really did try but most people dont care to learn and just ask. My attention wandered to something else as it didnt seem logical to waste time on it. [re: twelve years in, three companies, and i keep finding the same guy]”
Find where the people with the problem already talk about it and just be useful there for a while. Then message a few of them directly and ask if they'd try it.…
“Yea that's the answer I needed to here. It's hard though. I had high hopes. Thanks. [re: When do you decide to kill a feature?]”
“Yeah this is pretty much what we are doing. Watching how new users interact and asking for their feedback then iterating until we hopefully get a very useful and sticky product [re: We finally figured out how to get customers for our SaaS. Now we have a different problem.]”
“Don't try to guess problems in industries you don't know. Instead, find where people are already spending money and complaining about it: Mine 2- and 3-star software reviews: Go to G2, Capterra, or the Shopify App Store and look at popular, paid tools. Read the 2- and 3-star reviews. The recurring complaints about what those tools lack or overcharge for are your exact product specs. Find the "ugly spreadsheet": Ask local service businesses (gyms, property managers, trade contra”
I thought about that but given the first comment was just to do nothing with the page and that got the most upvotes I feel like Im going against the way this…
“i feel you on the manual grind. one thing that helped me was using a tool that scans reddit for people literally asking for what i build, so i don't have to scroll endlessly. replyhey.com does that and drafts replies too. might save you some time. [re: Day 13 of 30: I'm getting sign-ups (8 since Oct 1), and spending my time as you guys are telling me to]”
“Before Google was able to let you snap a picture of an object, instantly find results, and know all the answers in a matter of seconds, people struggled to find a community that could help. The olden times were treacherous when looking for answers to things you genuinely had no idea about. The only method of understanding things, anything really, was to ask Reddit and pray for the best results. Although we didn't have the luxury of instant results, waiting a couple of days for an answer was”
“I’ve just been building tools that I use personally because it’s a known problem / pain point (at least for 1 person) and have been finding steadily growing success doing so, if someone wanted to duplicate what I’ve built for themselves they 100% could but then be saddled with the maintenance / upkeep / cost of building it. Same as it’s always been, it’s just the building cost has gone down from having to hire a developer or doing it yourself to paying for AI. Now I’ve got tools to monitor googl”
“This has been a common issue for a long time now. The real game now is finding a problem that people would want fixed. Everything is so saturated. Talk to potential customers, find a painful problem, and validate demand before building more. My first 10 users came from conversations from friends and some strangers, not code. [re: AI made building a SaaS easy. now why is getting 1 customer harder than building the whole thing 💀]”
“Ok, thank you! I should probably take another look then! I found that especially older people seem to struggle with bitwardens quirks and I don't want to recommend something that just frustrates them. [re: Bitwarden announces Dual License (Published version update in app stores - #41 by grb - Notices - Bitwarden Community Forums)]”
“What moved our engine's repository was a stranger posting it where its users already argue, 87 visits from one Hacker News thread we didn't write against 9 from all we posted ourselves. So we'd put the tool where the argument already is. [re: Going to start shipping free tools. What I learnt building the first one.]”
“Exactly lol people lack critical thinking [re: Has anyone here read "Traction" by Gino Wickman? Is it a good book for entrepreneurs?]”
“i think the idea of a single worked example would do a lot to clear things up. the homepage feels like it splits your attention between two different stories and i kept wondering which side i was supposed to imagine myself on i found myself clicking around trying to find a concrete listing but the path wasn't obvious. a button that says something like "see how it works" with a walkthrough might keep people from bouncing while they figure it out the business vs individual question i”
“what you are building sounds cool! for buzzsearch we return both clusters and theme as well as raw quotes, the clusters are "emotional pain points," "recurring pain points," "complaints," "objections," and like specific "lingo" [re: I built a customer research MCP that reads comments from customers]”
“imo the real value here isnt the copy itself, its narrowing down which problem framing resonates most. are you doing any kind of clustering or ranking on the comments or is it more of a raw dump right now? [re: I built a customer research MCP that reads comments from customers]”
“rule 3. sheesh [re: I'm building an app for overseas and home stationed service members to find community. I want honest feedback before I spend money on developing it fully.]”
“honestly, i didn't. built first, which is a mistake, now i am not able to find conservations to validate the idea and if the problem is as big . [re: "i will not promote" how to get conversations with hvac ppl]”
“Getting users who had the same problem as you and then asking them is what makes sense. What you're doing here is the same thing that a ton of people are doing who want to make money or put something on their resume. [re: Help me help you]”
“I'm in the same boat. If all things went great and I 'made it', I know I couldn't handle all the negative/personal community comments without it getting to me. I only have a few hundred subscribers and already I feel like YouTube hasn't been good for my mental health. Anyway, appreciate you sharing where your head is at, a lot of us are about there but too stubborn and invested to do the hard thing and quit. [re: Quitting YouTube. I failed. Now time to give up.]”
“So what? [re: I built a boring database of reddit complaints. last month it made $3,200]”
“Talk to ten people with the problem before you build anything. Not a survey, a conversation. If five of them would pay for the fix today, build the smallest version for one of them and charge from day one. Everything else is decoration. We killed our last three ideas at the conversation stage and saved ourselves months each time. [re: How do you validate your ideas?]”
“This post has been flaired as “Vent”. As a reminder to commenting users, “Vent/Rant” posts are here to give our subscribers a safe place to vent their frustrations at an uncaring world to a supportive place of people who “get it”. Vents do not need to be fair. They do not need to be articulate. They do not need to be factual. They just need to be honest. Unlike most of the content on this subreddit, Vents should not be considered advice threads. In most cases it is not appropriate to try to give”
“The double-checking oven dials part of my brain appreciates the "poke around and break things" invite. Signed up and immediately tried to upload a cover image that was way too big, got a pretty generic error that didn't mention the size limit. Might be a quick fix for the onboarding flow. [re: Writers wanted: help test a new web novel and art platform before launch (18+)]”
“I don't see how this post was unhelpful. In fact, all I see is that it illuminates the predicament we're all in. [re: i finally found the paper trail for why we are all constantly exhausted and it makes me sick]”
“this hits hard. the 'one more feature' loop is a black hole, and the pivot to people over features is exactly right. for that part, we've found that keeping an eye on reddit for people describing the problem you solve is a shortcut to engaged conversations. we built a little tool that does the scanning for you, but even just a saved search can work. good luck with backdoor. [re: My first product had 13k users and it still took 7 months to make $1,000. My second one got there in 30 da”
“first thing i did for mine was just drop a link in relevant subreddits and discords where people actually talk about the problem youre solving not the spammy promo ones dont overthink it just get in front of people and listen to what they complain about your landing page can wait [re: How to GTM with Idea?]”