A lot of founders spend months building products that look great but struggle to get real users. In most cases, the issue isn’t execution it’s choosing the wrong problem.
A useful product doesn’t need to be complex. It needs to solve a problem that people face frequently and are actively looking to fix. If your solution can save time, reduce costs, or simplify a repetitive task, you’re already on the right track.
Before building, it helps to validate a few things:
● Is this a real, recurring problem?
● Are people currently using a workaround?
● Would they pay to solve it faster or better?
Even simple conversations with potential users can reveal more than weeks of development.
In the early stages, clarity matters more than scale. A small product that solves one problem well is often more valuable than a large product that tries to do everything.
What problem are you currently working on solving?
Build Something People Will Actually Pay For
byu/Pro_Automation__ inEntrepreneur
Posted by Pro_Automation__
3 Comments
this is good advice, but the hard part is most people still validate with words, not actions. people will say they want something, but the key indicator is are they already spending time/money on a solution, a good litmus is can you get people to prepay before you build it all out, also, another filter that helps is, if this problem goes away for a week, will anyone care? if not, then it’s probably not a strong problem
the big change is from building what people think is useful to building what people actually want to use
People don’t struggle to get users.
They struggle to get paid.
Getting paid is the real validation.
We’ve been focused on helping service firms actually see what’s happening in their business without digging through spreadsheets, which is a problem they face every day. Talking to a few firms early showed us that clarity and connection between financial and operational data is worth paying for, even before we built anything.