Reddit Problem Research
Search subreddits for repeated complaints and wishes to find problems people already talk about, in their own words.
Stage 1 of 10 · from idea to first customer
Find a problem worth solving
Dig up real, painful problems in places where people already complain, before you fall in love with a solution.
A startup that solves a problem nobody cares about fails no matter how well it is built. This stage protects you from that before you spend a cent: you read what people complain about in public, in their own words, and you collect the problems that keep coming back.
Reddit threads, one-star reviews, job ads and freelance gigs are free research archives. Each method below shows where to look, which phrases to search and how to log what you find so patterns jump out.
What you should have at the end of this stage
A list of 3 to 5 specific problems, each backed by real quotes from real people, with a rough score for how frequent it is and how much it hurts.
The 10 methods in this stage
Amazon Review Mining
Read the middle-star reviews of best-selling products to find the gap buyers keep describing and nobody has fixed.
App Store Review Research
Read low-star reviews of competing apps to find missing features, update anger and users who are ready to switch.
Quora Question Analysis
Find questions people keep asking on Quora that get weak answers, then rewrite them as problem statements you can test.
Facebook Group Insights
Join niche Facebook groups, search past posts and ask one honest question to learn which problems members raise again and again.
Problem Journal
Log every frustration you see for 2 to 4 weeks, then score each one on frequency, pain and willingness to pay.
Industry Forum Research
Read the forums, Stack Exchange sites and Slack or Discord groups of one profession to find the problems they solve by hand.
Job Board Signal Mining
Read job ads for repetitive manual tasks: when companies hire people to do them, they already spend money on the problem.
Freelance Marketplace Research
Study what people repeatedly pay freelancers for on Upwork and Fiverr, at what price, and which tasks you could productize.
Competitor Review Analysis
Read low-star reviews of market leaders on G2, Capterra and Trustpilot and map why customers switch away from them.