How do you find problems to solve?

Start with your own pain points.

What are the things that you find frustrating or annoying in your daily life? What are the things that you wish were easier or better?

These are all potential problems that you could solve with a product or service.

Talk to people. Ask your friends, family, colleagues, and other people in your network about the problems they're facing. What are their pain points? What would make their lives easier?

The more people you talk to, the more likely you are to find a problem that's worth solving.

Do your research.

Look for trends and patterns in the market. What are the problems that people are complaining about online? What are the products and services that are struggling?

By understanding the landscape, you'll be able to identify problems that are ripe for disruption.
Focus on problems that are not too complicated to solve. As an indie hacker, you don't have the resources to solve complex problems.

Instead, focus on problems that are relatively simple to solve with a software product or service.
Here are some resources that you can use to find problems to solve:

Indie Hackers: This place is a great resource for indie hackers. You can find blog posts, interviews, and other resources on how to find problems to solve.

Product Hunt: This is also a great place to discover new products and services. You can also find discussions about problems that people are facing.

The Lean Startup: This book by Eric Ries is a great resource for learning how to validate problems and solutions.

I hope these tips help you find a problem to solve. Good luck!

Dusting off an old post by Paul Graham. http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

1. Learn new stuff = discover new problems
2. Meet people = learn new stuff = ⤴

Hey Lorenzo, have you heard of the business model Discovery Canvas?

It was created by Gary Schoeniger who's the founder of the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative. The canvas does a great job simplifying the steps of exploring problems and then validating your ideas. I think it would be super helpful for you at this stage.

I actually wrote a who blog about the canvas, how to use it, and how to find and validate problems you want to solve.

Feel free to check out the post here: https://www.danmarzullo.com/how-to-validate-your-business-idea/

At the end of the article I've also included a link to download a blank copy of your own canvas.

Hope this helps!
Dan

The negative comment section, Subreddit trending posts, youtube video comments, or the problems you face while working like taking notes, blue lights, writing content, etc...

To find problems to solve for indie-hacking, consider personal pain points, observe others, engage in online communities, conduct market research, analyze product reviews, explore niche websites, use keyword research tools, follow industry news, and listen to customer feedback. Focus on significant problems with market demand and validate their existence before pursuing solutions.

do something new and far away from your daily work. then you will find something maybe in other industy is effecless. That is it!

nice

We both live in italy… you literally have problems all around you lol! just talk to some (entrepreneurs/tech guy) friends 🥲

One of my favorite websites for new startup ideas is Kern.al (https://kern.al/).

It's still invite only, but if you need an invite code, please use MARKWORMGOOR163750.
(No - I don't gain anything from sharing that - no referral fees or any other perks - I just love the community there)

I built nicheprowler.com [ Exploding topics but for SaaS niche Ideas], It centralized Producthunt launch Trend niches and the niches Twitter builders are building o ad beyond that. Go and check it out You can find lots of SaaS niche Inspirations which are equivalent to good problem

I usually think of issues i have in real life or I try to expand on other peoples ideas so I have gotten atleast 10 ideas from doing one of these two things although they aren't validated.

This is an interesting question!

I've not successfully solved a problem; however, I take an active interest in companies that have. Off the top of my head, there are two great ways to find problems:

1. Consulting/Agency Work

The narrative is that this type of work sucks; it's not entrepreneurial, and you have no real exit opportunities. That said, companies come to you with their problems. I know someone who had an architect firm ask them to digitise their time sheets. They turned the outcome into a SASS and sold it for £8 million a few years.

2. Look around for regulatory inefficiencies

Right now, employees are grappling with ineffective processes and wading through needless admin; this is particularly true where an organisation is required to submit regulatory reports. For instance, in the UK, all schools must report on pupil safeguarding issues. A company called CPOMS, streamlines this process. They made millions in profit and have recently been acquired

What's key, the above examples save hours in wasted time. Avoid, nice to have solutions. For instance, I set up a company that allowed gyms to run online fitness challenges. It provided a, nice to have, revenue stream. I had some success; however, it was a slog, and had very little stickiness.

Worked in B2B to see which problems are there. It is vastly different from B2C.

Yep so true - whenever I've tried to sit down on a saturday afternoon and 'come up with something' it's not been fruitful.

For me, it's more about building a mindset that leads to ideas coming naturally by absorbing as much information as possible. We all do that differently but things that have helped me are reading books and listening to podcasts.

I've just finished the book "How I built this" by Guy Raz who shares experiences talking to founders of famous startups about how they came up with their ideas and how they started off - really great for understanding their mindset.

Also the podcast "The Social Radars" is really good. Hosted by some of the original founders of YC again with high-profile founders as guests. Some of the stories are incredible while also again helping to build that mindset.

I've found keeping this up for a few months leads to thinking about things slightly differently and ultimately having more ideas.

Hope that helps.

You can start with the field you are in. Talk to people, as them over a relaxed conversation what are the top 3 problems they would like solved. Don't ask for a list of 10, etc. Just concentrate on the top 3. Ask them, most people already know what pain-points / problems need solving.

Good problems will be complicated to solve, else you'd most likely be picking some thing that may look like a low hanging fruit, but a fruit that no one wants to eat.

Become very observant about the world around and then questions why anyone does anything that they do?

The answer is almost always: incentives.

There are societal and financial gears that affect people's decision making.

Once you start looking for "what are the pressures and incentives that could cause person X to do Y" then you will start to uncover problems and opportunities everywhere you turn.

I always try to solve problems that I actually have myself. It's definitely helpful if you are already part of your target audience.

Hello! Do you really need to start with problems?
Look at this post about all the starting methods I could find: Avoid the grave with these starting methods.

Hello! Finding problems to solve is a crucial step in indie-hacking and entrepreneurship. Here are some strategies to help you discover good problems to solve:

Personal Pain Points: Start by looking at your own experiences and identify any recurring issues or challenges you face in your daily life. If you find something that bothers you, chances are others might be facing the same problem.

Talk to People: Engage in conversations with friends, family, colleagues, or online communities. Ask them about the challenges they encounter or the tasks they find frustrating. Listen carefully to their pain points and needs.

Online Forums and Social Media: Browse forums, subreddits, and social media groups related to your interests or a particular niche. Look for common themes or questions people are asking. These platforms can be a goldmine for problem discovery.

Market Research: Conduct market research to identify trends, gaps, and emerging needs in your target market. Look at industry reports, competitor analysis, and customer surveys to gain insights.

Existing Products and Services: Review existing products or services in the market. Pay attention to user reviews and feedback to see if there are any recurring complaints or unmet needs.

Solve Your Own Problems First: Look for simple, niche problems that haven't been adequately addressed by existing solutions. Focus on creating a product that solves your problem initially, and then expand from there.

Innovate or Improve: You don't necessarily need to find a completely new problem. Sometimes, there's room for improvement or innovation in existing solutions, making them more efficient or user-friendly.

Startup Idea Generators: There are online tools and platforms that can help generate startup ideas based on specific criteria. While not all ideas will be winners, they can spark inspiration and help you brainstorm.

As for resource recommendations, here are some websites and platforms that can assist you in finding problems and startup ideas:

Indie Hackers: A community of indie entrepreneurs sharing their experiences and ideas.
Product Hunt: A platform showcasing new products and startups, which can give you insights into current trends and gaps.
Reddit: Various subreddits related to entrepreneurship and problem-solving.
Twitter: Follow influencers and experts in your field for valuable insights and discussions.
Google Trends: Explore trending topics and search queries to identify areas of interest.
Quora: A Q&A platform where people ask questions about their challenges.
Remember, the best problems to solve are those that have a significant impact on a specific target audience. Be open to exploring various sources and be willing to iterate on your ideas as you refine your understanding of the problem space. Good luck with your indie-hacking journey!

What I used to do and still do until this day is focus for 30 minutes and think of all the problems I face in life, or that I know others are facing.

After I've written them down, I rank them with the top being the most painful problem and the bottom least painful problem.

Think of possible solutions to these problems and just pick the first one that seems manageable and go all in.

Make sure to prove your concept as early as possible and act, adjust, and assess as necessary.

And probably the most important:

Always listen to the market, if you decide to make product "X" and it's helping them with "Y", but they need "Z"... Change the direction of your product to "Z".

Hope this helps!

I think this is a solution where if you just start writing things down on a simple list, you will start to build a habit of paying attention and more problems will surface for you.

From a subjective experience as the world becomes more complex, faster and with more services in our lives, there are just more disconnections, annoyances and problems that can use a solution.

A tiny example from yesterday. I have a financial person that is helping me budget etc. Her recommendation is to budget for long term expenses and then save to fund these expenses moving forward. For example travel in 2024 would be $X,XXX + home maintenance $X,XXX. All of these expenses add up to some level of savings.

I will put all of these long term expenses in a separate account. But once that account is created and partially funded, how do I "tag" the money? How do I know if I've spent all my travel money for the year etc?

The solution might be to tag funds in an account and some automated way to reconcile this.

Anyways, that might be a stupid business idea or already exist. The point is once you start paying attention, you'll probably see a lot of problems. And if you want some of my better problems/ideas just send me a DM.

Paul Graham has great essays on this

Check out these resources:

• https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-to-brainstorm-great-business-ideas-ab51c3d51c

• https://stackingthebricks.com/validation-is-backwards/

• https://www.indiehackers.com/round-table/how-to-come-up-with-profitable-online-business-ideas

My best strategy so far has been to make friends with people IRL and talk to them about their work problems. I've had quite a few people come back to me after months of years with app ideas or contract work.

I personally don't like solving problems for other developers as I feel like that is oversaturated (most developers first ideas are going to be solving problems for themselves/other developers).

Hello! As the title says, I'm interested in understanding how to find problems to solve.

I get it that we should obsess over the problem and not the solution, but where to find a good problem? Especially in the framework of indie-hacking, so the problem should not be too complicated to solve.

Any resource recommendations?

Thanks