So You Built Something Nobody Wants. Now What?

I used to think building a great product was like being struck by lightning. You’d get a brilliant idea, lock yourself in a room for six months, and emerge with something so perfect the world couldn’t help but beat a path to your door.

I tried it. Twice.

My first attempt was a clever B2C app. I launched it to the sound of crickets. My second was a “validated” B2B tool. I launched it to a chorus of polite, soul-crushing emails saying, “Cool idea, but we wouldn’t pay for it.” I was back at square one, feeling like I’d just wasted a year of my life.

Then I realized something: I was doing it all wrong.

The Problem with "Brilliant Ideas"

Most startup advice romanticizes the idea. It’s full of talk about “disruptive tech,” “finding market gaps,” and “10x solutions.” It’s no wonder we all end up building things in a vacuum, convinced our solution is the one that will change everything.

The real issue isn't that your ideas are bad—it's that you started with an idea in the first place. And when you lead with your precious solution, you can smell the desperation from a mile away.

This is the founder’s original sin: falling in love with a solution before you’ve found a problem worth a damn.

What Actually Works: Three Approaches That Aren't a Waste of Time

1. Become a Pain Detective (Not an Inventor)

Instead of dreaming up features, go find what’s already broken. The messy, expensive, hair-on-fire problems that businesses are already dealing with.

I’ve seen founders find gold by listening for genuine frustration:

“We’re manually copy-pasting data between these two systems for 10 hours a week.”
“Our sales team is wasting the first 5 minutes of every call explaining what we do.”
“We lost a $50k contract because our security questionnaire wasn’t filled out right.”

These are painkillers, not vitamins. Vitamins are nice-to-haves. Painkillers solve an urgent, costly problem that someone is actively trying to fix right now. Nobody wants to pay for a vitamin when their leg is broken.

The key: Stop looking for a gap in the market. Start looking for a hole in someone’s budget.

2. Ask About Scars, Not The Future

The single worst question you can ask is, “Would you pay for this?” People will lie to you. Not because they’re mean, but because it’s socially awkward to crush your dreams. And more importantly, people are terrible at predicting what they’ll actually do.

Instead of pitching your idea, you need to become a historian of their problems. This is the whole point of "The Mom Test."

Here’s the difference:

The Wrong Way: “I’m thinking of building a tool to help you organize client feedback. Sound useful?” (Useless. You’ve just invited them to lie to you.)

The Right Way: “Walk me through how you handled feedback on your last big project. What part was the most frustrating? What have you tried to do about it?” (Gold. You’re asking for facts about past behavior.)

The money is in that last question. If they say, “Eh, it’s annoying but we just deal,” the pain isn’t strong enough. But if they say, “Ugh, I tried using three different tools and even hired a VA for a few hours to sort it out,” you’ve just struck oil. They’re already spending time and money on the problem.

The key: Their crappy, cobbled-together workaround is your validation.

3. Get Paid Before You Write a Line of Code

Once you’ve found a painful problem someone is already trying to solve, your first instinct is to fire up your code editor. Don’t.

Instead, offer to solve their problem for them. Manually. As a service. If your idea is a lead-gen tool, you manually find the leads. If it’s a reporting tool, you build the reports in a spreadsheet. And you charge for it.

Good examples:

“For $199/month, I will personally compile that weekly report for you.”
“I’ll manage your client feedback process using a shared doc and email for $99/month.”
“Let me handle your security questionnaires. I’ll do the first one for $500.”

The key: If you can't get someone to pay you to do it by hand, you definitely won't get them to pay you for software that does it.

The Real Rules of Building Something That Sells

Every market is different, but here’s what actually matters:

Distribution > Product. A mediocre product that knows how to reach customers will beat a perfect product that doesn’t, every single time. Who already sells to your customers? Partner with them.
Charge from day one. The moment money changes hands is the only validation that counts. It proves the pain is real.
Fail fast and cheap. My two failed projects cost me time, but very little money. That’s not failure; it’s low-cost market research.
Pick one thing. Stop dabbling. Pick one audience and one problem and give it a real shot for at least 6 months. Real insights come from focus.

What This Actually Looks Like

Here’s a real example. A founder I know was talking to marketing agencies. He didn't pitch an idea. He just asked, "What's the most annoying, repetitive task on your plate?"

One agency owner said, "I waste hours every month creating the same basic performance reports for clients. It's necessary, but it's a time-suck."

The founder didn't go build a dashboard. He said, "Okay, for $150 a month per client, I'll create those reports for you." The agency owner signed up three clients on the spot. For two months, the founder made the reports by hand in Google Sheets. He learned exactly what metrics mattered and what didn't.

Result: He had $450 in monthly recurring revenue before he wrote a single line of code. He knew exactly what to build because his customers had already paid for the blueprint.

The Long Game

Building a business isn't about finding a growth hack or a magic idea. It's about methodically reducing risk. Every conversation, every manual task, every "no"—it's all data that gets you closer to something that works.

This takes time. Months, not days. But the payoff is real: you build something you know people will pay for, because they already are.

Getting Started (Without The Grandiose Plans)

Pick 2-3 online communities (like specific subreddits or Discords) where a professional audience you understand hangs out.
Spend a week just reading. Make a list of complaints, frustrations, and things that sound expensive.
Start having conversations. Don't pitch anything. Just ask people to tell you about the most annoying parts of their job.
Find one person with a real, validated pain and offer to solve it for them manually, for money.
Be patient and consistent.

That’s it. No "disruptive innovation." No "visionary product." Just finding a real problem and getting paid to solve it.

The Bottom Line

A successful business works when it doesn't start with a brilliant idea. It starts when you find someone in real pain and say, "I can help with that." When you're genuinely useful, people want to give you their money. When you're just there to push your solution, they can tell.

The best way to build something people want isn't to be a genius. It's to be a detective, a listener, and a problem-solver.

And that’s not a secret you can hack—it's just being useful.