I Had a Thousand "Brilliant" SaaS Ideas. They Were All Worthless
I used to have a folder on my desktop called "Million-Dollar Ideas." You probably have one too. A stray note, a Trello board, a 2 AM text to yourself filled with clever features and catchy names. I’d imagine the slick landing page, the glowing reviews, the hockey-stick growth chart.
For years, I watched myself and other founders chase these lightbulb moments, convinced our genius was the only missing ingredient.
Then I realized something: we were all doing it wrong.
The Problem with "The Big Idea"
Most advice for founders starts with the idea. "What's your big idea?" "Protect your idea." "Find a co-founder for your idea." It's no wonder we end up building things in a vacuum, convinced the world is just waiting for our brilliant solution.
The real issue isn't that your ideas are bad—it's that the market can smell a solution in search of a problem from a mile away. And when your "brilliant idea" is based on a shower thought instead of someone's actual, gut-wrenching pain, people don't just ignore it. They don't even notice it exists.
Your idea, by itself, is worthless. The real work starts long before you think about a single feature. It starts by finding a problem so painful, people will rip the solution right out of your hands.
What Actually Works: Three Ways to Find a Problem That Matters
Forget your list of ideas. Your new job is to become a problem detective. You're looking for friction, frustration, and things that are just plain broken.
1. Solve Your Own Damn Problems
Instead of inventing problems for imaginary users, look at your own workday. What makes you want to throw your computer across the room? What tedious task have you cobbled together a grotesque spreadsheet to manage?
I've seen this play out a thousand times:
A design agency gets sick of managing projects over email, so they build an internal tool. That tool becomes Basecamp.
A gaming company builds an internal chat app to stop the chaos. The game fails, but the app becomes Slack.
This works because it gives you an unfair advantage. You are Customer Zero. You feel the pain. You know what a real solution needs to do because you're the one who needs it.
The key: Your best first idea is probably buried in your own frustration.
2. Become an Anthropologist (for People with Problems)
Don't have a burning problem of your own? Find a tribe and study them. Pick a niche you find interesting—plumbers, podcasters, indie bookstore owners, whatever. Then, go lurk where they live online.
Dive into their forums and subreddits. What do they complain about constantly? What questions get asked every week?
Read the 2- and 3-star reviews for the tools they already use. Ignore the glowing praise. The real gold is in the "I love this, but I just wish it could..." comments.
Look for the workarounds. When someone proudly posts their 17-step Zapier automation, they're not just bragging—they're handing you a product roadmap on a silver platter.
The goal is to find a migraine, not a paper cut. People pay to get rid of a migraine. They learn to live with a paper cut.
The key: Find a problem that happens often and hurts a lot.
3. Talk to People (Without Pitching Your Dumb Idea)
Once you think you've found a migraine, you have to validate it. This is where everyone messes up. They go to a potential customer and say, "I have an idea for an app that does X, would you use it?"
Useless. People are nice. They will lie to protect your feelings.
Your only job is to learn about their problem. Ask questions about their life, not your idea.
Good questions sound like this:
"Walk me through how you currently handle [the painful process]."
"What's the most annoying part of that?"
"Have you tried to solve this before? How'd that go?"
"If you had a magic wand, what would you fix?"
Listen for emotion. If they don't sound genuinely frustrated—if they don't use words like "hate," "nightmare," or "it's the worst"—it's a paper cut. Walk away and find another problem.
The key: If you talk about your solution at all, you've already failed the test.
The Real Rules of Problem Hunting
Every niche is different, but here’s what actually matters:
Read the room. Before you can solve a community's problem, you have to understand their world. Lurk first. Learn the language.
Look for competitors. If nobody else is trying to solve this problem, you should be terrified. It either means it's not a real problem or it's impossible to solve. Competition is validation. Your job is to find a wedge—the one thing you can do better for a specific group of people.
Make sure the market isn't tiny. Do a quick, back-of-the-napkin check. Are there enough people with this migraine to build a business you'd actually want to run?
Accept that you'll be wrong. Your first, second, and maybe tenth hypothesis about a problem might be completely off. That's tuition for learning how this works.
What This Actually Looks Like
Here's a real example. A friend was convinced freelance writers needed a new, AI-powered writing tool. He spent a month mocking it up.
Before building, I pushed him to talk to ten writers. He didn't mention his AI idea. He just asked, "What's the hardest part of your job, besides the writing itself?"
Result: Eight of them said the worst part of their job was tracking down payments and nagging clients to pay invoices. The "writing" part was fine. The "getting paid" part was a nightmare. He threw out the AI idea and started sketching a simple invoice-chasing tool instead. He found the real migraine.
The Long Game
Hunting for problems isn't a growth hack. It's a fundamental shift. It takes more time upfront. It's less glamorous than having a "vision."
But the payoff is real: when you build something that solves an acute, validated pain, you don't have to search for customers. They're already looking for you. Your marketing isn't about manufacturing hype; it's about showing up where your people are and saying, "I heard you, and I built this to fix that."
Getting Started (Without a "Brilliant" Idea)
Pick one niche you find interesting. Just one.
Spend a week lurking in their subreddit or online forum. Your only job is to read and listen for complaints.
Identify one potential "migraine" you see mentioned repeatedly.
Find five people in that community and ask for 15 minutes of their time to learn about their work.
Talk to them. Don't pitch. Just listen.
That's it. No "solutioneering." No "idea validation." Just finding real pain.
The Bottom Line
SaaS success works when it isn't about your clever idea. It's about your obsession with someone else's problem. When you genuinely understand their frustration, people want to know what you're working on. When you're just there to push your solution, they can tell.
The best SaaS doesn't start with a solution at all. It starts with empathy.
And that's not a framework you can download—it's just being useful.