How to find problems to solve on Reddit

Product ideas from conversations in online communities.

Online communities can be a huge source of inspiration when it comes to coming up with business ideas.

Your target customers meet online to talk with like-minded people about their questions, struggles, and solution recommendations. By finding these conversations, you can tap into a treasure trove of information that can help you find unmet needs in a market, come up with requirements for solutions, and get in touch with target customers to validate your solution.

GummySearch is a customer development tool for online communities on Reddit. This guide shows how to use the tool to dive into an audience and find inspiration for business ideas. Although it focuses on Reddit, the same methods can be used for communities on other platforms.

Finding problems to solve on GummySearch

Today we're going to take on the persona of an application developer that is looking to build an app but doesn't know what it should be yet.

Not sure where to start? Try picking an existing hobby or interest of yours. If you do pursue a new venture, you'll be spending lots of time with this type of customer, so you might as well pick someone you have common interests with :)

My pick for today's walkthrough? Gardening! 🍃🌳🍏🥦

Video Walkthrough! If you prefer watching videos over reading text posts, I recorded this audience discovery session on Loom. The content of this page should be very similar to the video recording, so feel free to follow along with whichever format you prefer. Update : This video below highlights some key features in GummySearch for idea generation, but now it's even more powerful with the AI Pattern Finder . Check out the AI Pattern finder demo after you watch this loom, to see how you can find pain points and solution requests in 1/100th the time!

1. Finding your audience's communities

Reddit is a massive place, and the first thing we'll do is find the lovely corner where the Gardeners hang out.

I wrote a detailed guide on finding Subreddits which outlines the steps to take to find all relevant Subreddits and put them in a GummySearch Audience for easy research. I won't go over these steps here, so if you haven't made an Audience on GummySearch before, please read it!

Here's the end result: 6.1 million Gardeners across 11 different Subreddits. Wow! Let's dive in.

Gardening Subreddits

2. Dive into suggested targeted conversations

The Audience feature on GummySearch automatically suggests several targeted keyword searches, which let you dive into various categories of conversations.

Apart from Top Content and Hot Discussions, each suggestion category has various keyword suggestions that you can select from to find insightful conversations.

For example, in "Solution Requests", the first keyword suggestion is "Any tools" which in our gardening audience might lead to physical tools, while as an application developer I might find more use out of the "any apps" or "any websites" keyword searches.

Audience suggestions

Top Content

Top content over the past month. Helpful to determine what kind of things these communities discuss and what the format is for top-performing content. This feature is mostly for those looking to publish content as opposed to coming up with ideas

Hot Discussions

The current buzz happening in these Subreddits. Helpful with catching up with your audience and participating in current community conversations. This feature is mostly for those looking to engage their community as opposed to coming up with ideas

Solution Requests

People asking for various tools, applications, websites, and solutions from their fellow community members. Helpful with assessing the kinds of solutions that meet the needs of your audience. Be sure to follow through and read the comments on these posts, as that'll help you identify competitors and their gaps.

Advice Requests

People asking for advice or resources. Helpful with figuring out what informational materials might be missing from your audience's day-to-day. If you'd like to pursue a content strategy for your business, these questions could help you assess what kind of content would be helpful to write.

Pain & Anger

These conversations are going to contain frustration and anger. Very helpful for figuring out what the most painful problems are in these communities, what the poster has tried, and what the community suggests as a way to solve the problem. If you want passionate customers, find passionate problems worth solving.

Conversations containing ideas for tools that should exist, or ways that the world could be different. Helpful for identifying ideas that people closer to the problem could have.

People talking about spending money, budgeting, and pricing. Assuming you're looking to start a business and not a charity, these are good conversations to stay in tune with to know what the spending patterns are of your target customers.

Opportunities

Conversations around things that could be better. This includes opportunities for automation, making processes faster, and making user experiences better. Here you will likely find conversations about potential competitors and their gaps.

3. Read & Organize conversations

At this point, you'll be diving into a good amount of insightful conversations, and GummySearch can help you get the most out of them and stay organized during your ideation process. Here are a few helpful features you'll use.

Browse view

See the highlighted keywords we are searching for at a glance. View the full contents by clicking on it.

Click out to Reddit

Click out to Reddit to view comments. If you have viewed a post on Reddit, it'll have a green checkmark on it now, so you know you've been there.

Save conversations to lists

You'll likely come across several families of conversations that interest you. Save them to individual lists so that you can refer back to them later. When you identify a problem you want to dive deeper into, you can use the list to reach out to the people who posted them and ask to interview them.

Browse Suggested Conversations

4. Identify gaps from competitors

After diving into these communities for a few minutes, I found a shockingly large amount of Reddit submissions that were all related to one another. There appear to be a lot of people with needs around identifying mushrooms in their garden. They are either asking their community for help identifying based off of a photo, or asking about apps that can help them.

When following some posts to Reddit in order to view the comments, I found one app named "iNaturalist" that people referenced. Competitor names are fantastic keywords to search within your audience, so that you can see what the community thinks of existing solutions.

Flip from "Suggestions" to "Browse" to search ANY keyword within your audience.

Browse Audience by Keyword

Looking at some of these conversations, I found a lot of folks questioning the results that iNaturalist provided. It looks like it's a general app that is helpful with identifying other species, but is quite lacking in identifying mushrooms. Because there are so many people on Reddit asking for such solutions, it seems there could be an app opportunity here!

Browse Audience by Keyword Results

💡 So at this point I've found a problem within my audience, and I have an idea. I'm going to make a competitor app to iNaturalist that ONLY focuses on identifying mushrooms. Since it'll be more targeted, I'm going to make sure that the results are the best they can be. The people want are asking for it!

I know, this idea might seem like a plant (teehee) for the purpose of this guide. I assure you, I picked Gardeners by chance and the unmet need was quite obvious from there. If anyone wants to pursue this app idea, go for it! I'll even help you get your initial users, I don't think it'll be very hard ;)

When browsing for specific keywords in your audience, you can also track them to keep up to date with new conversations as they occur. If a new Reddit submission gets posted within your Audience that contains your keyword, you can be the first to know about it.

Next Steps: Validate your Solution

Now I want to be clear, finding some conversations on Reddit is great for inspiration, but those conversations don't mean you have a fully-validated business idea on your hands.

I would highly recommend talking to some potential customers before building any product that serves them, to make sure the problem you are solving is a real one and one that you can make a business out of.

I wrote a guide to idea validation that could be helpful. Give it a read to find out how frame your idea, identify its risks, talk to people to get honest feedback, and more forward with building a solution with confidence that it's going to be a useful one.

How to save Reddit posts

Discover your audience

GummySearch is an audience research toolkit for 130,000 unique communities on Reddit.

If you are looking for startup problems to solve, want to validate your idea or find your first customers online, GummySearch is for you.

Sign up for free, get community insights in minutes.

Audience Research

Business growth

Business tips

How to find business ideas and validate them quickly with Reddit (and other tools)

A hero image for Reddit app tips, with the Reddit logo on a red background

I'm an entrepreneur, and in my early twenties, I thought that meant coming up with new ideas. I finally realized it's much easier to start with a problem: if your idea doesn't clearly solve a problem, it's going to be an uphill battle. 

Here, I'll share how I spot problems worth solving and then quickly test whether my solution is a viable one—and how you can do the same.

Successful businesses always start with a problem

Business ideas are fun (and often easy), but without a validated problem and appropriate solution, an idea is bound to fail. All successful companies really do is solve big enough problems for an audience willing to pay.

The perfect example of this is Zapier . Here's the problem: business owners, marketers, and other digital professionals struggle to get information from one piece of software into another. Unless they can write APIs or have a team that can execute the technical work, it's something they simply can't do. And even if they do have a team to help, it's expensive and time-consuming.

2017: "I get joy from coding and hacking together APIs" 2022: "I get joy from creating Zaps" Hosting code, servers, and configuring APIs is such a chore! No code wins. — Pat Walls (@thepatwalls) February 17, 2022

Zapier solves this by providing thousands of ready-made connections between popular business apps . It's cost-effective, user-friendly, and reliable. It also happens to be a cool idea.

Types of problems worth solving

Not all problems have the same value, so it's equally as important to identify which ones are worth solving. To increase your chances of success in business, ask yourself the following three questions before you decide to tackle a problem:

Is the problem situated in a growing market?

Do the customers experiencing this problem have purchasing power?

Am I able and equipped to solve this problem?

For example, you might spot that email marketers struggle to generate subject lines. And since subject lines can make or break an email campaign, marketers typically spend hours rewriting them. One solution to this problem could be an AI-powered tool that generates subject lines based on the content of the email. But if you've never written any code or managed a team of developers, you're probably not equipped to solve the problem. 

This is exactly why Copy.ai and Jasper have grown exponentially faster than their long list of competitors. They solve a big problem for an audience willing to pay—and they were well equipped to do so by way of technical expertise and funding.

Where to find problems 

Since the internet is full of information (mostly terrible, some incredible), it can be leveraged to find problems your potential customers are suffering with. Here are the four ways I've found most useful in discovering problems.

1. 1- to 3-star product reviews

Customers who leave negative reviews feel strongly about the experience they had, and usually include a lot of detail. This is valuable information to anyone trying to find a problem worth solving. The gems lie in the 1- to 3-star reviews—head over to Amazon and take a look.

Here's an example: disposable beauty face masks are wasteful and expensive. Seems like a solid problem. Maybe it could be solved with reusable silicone face masks? An easy way to test this hypothesis is to read the reviews of existing silicone face masks.

A review of silicone masks on Amazon

Check out that level of detail. We found out that people don't enjoy the silicone face mask experience because it's uncomfortable and there are issues with fit. People might even be using them to keep the disposable masks in place—it doesn't actually replace them. This could be an opportunity to improve the product or pivot to something else. 

2. Niche Facebook Groups 

Ever heard the phrase "riches are in the niches"? It's true. 

People are passionate about their hobbies, and they share every detail in Facebook Groups. This makes it a great place for identifying problems they experience.  

For example, if you went to a Facebook Group for spearfishers, you'd probably see them chatting about how they're often being run over by boats and jet skis (since spearfishers wear camouflage wetsuits, and the floats they use are pretty far away from them, it's not uncommon). This is a huge problem that spearfishers would likely pay good money to solve, and it's definitely not an idea you'd come up with during a brainstorming session.

3. Subreddit data

Speaking of niches, active subreddit members are a really passionate audience. Tools like Subreddit Stats are built specifically to analyze subreddit data, like the growth of a subreddit, which other subreddits users are active in, and frequent keywords.

A screenshot of subreddit data on r/blogging

You can see that the r/Blogging subreddit has been on a steady incline over the last couple of years, which is great: huge spikes in growth aren't always a good sign because it can ruin the quality of posts in the subreddit. The top submissions this year are also pretty interesting. From a user achieving their first dollar to another user hitting 100,000 visits, the problems these users face are likely diverse.

By analyzing the top keywords in the subreddit, you can start making some predictions on the type of problems members of r/Blogging are experiencing. 

A screenshot of top keywords in the subreddit, with a few highlighted in red

At first glance, you could assume that non-technical and inconsistent bloggers are struggling to monetize their blogs. This seems like a pretty big problem to deal with, especially if the reason people start a blog is to eventually monetize it. From there, you can read more of the posts to get deeper insights.

4. Your own problems

By solving a problem you personally experience, you're more likely to nail the solution. 

Ticker Nerd was built to scratch my own itch. My business partner was sending me an overwhelming amount of stock information. I couldn't keep up and figured there had to be a more effective way to stay on top of the stock market. We had a quick phone call to chat about the problem.  

We decided we could solve this by surfacing trending stocks (via social mentions). We then ran sentiment analysis to figure out what the internet was saying, rather than scouring Reddit and Twitter. The solution evolved over time, but it solved a genuine problem I was experiencing. 

How to organically validate your solution using Reddit

Once you've found a problem you think is worth solving, a viable solution is usually easy to spot. Conducting user interviews is a great way to hear firsthand whether your problem and solution are a fit—I've used Userbrain and UserTesting to make the process easy. But my favorite way to validate a solution is via Reddit. 

The easiest way to know if your customers want your solution, of course, is if they pay you for it. With a landing page and the right Reddit posts, you can make this happen. 

Note: Reddit moderators have a very low tolerance for spam. This means you'll need an decently aged Reddit account, and you'll need to—for your sake and the sake of other Redditors—follow the subreddit guidelines properly.

Here's my process for validating ideas on Reddit.

1. Create a basic landing page

I use Carrd or Webflow , but any landing page builder will do the trick. The goal is to pre-sell a limited amount of your product. Logos, branding, font, stuff like that—not important right now. Don't get hung up on the small things.

Do make sure the copy is compelling. If you're a beginner copywriter, use the AIDA method (attention, interest, desire, and action). You want as many people as possible who view the landing page to take an action, so focus on your call to action (CTA) .

2. Create an account with an eCommerce platform

I use Gumroad , but you can pick any platform that will allow you to start capturing payments . Set an early bird or pre-sale price under $100. This will be the sweet spot—anything more, and people will become hesitant to pay.  

3. Craft the Reddit posts

One way to find relevant subreddits is through a tool called Anvaka . The goal is to identify where your potential customers are most active, find the posts that do well, and then replicate them.

Using the tool, you can see that members of the r/Blogging subreddit are also active in r/opywriting, r/juststart, r/content_marketing, r/SEO, and a whole lot more. These are all subreddits you should craft posts for. 

A screenshot of data from Avanka

You can click on any of the subreddits and rank the posts by the top of all time. This will give you an indicator of how valuable your post needs to be.

Avoid reposting the same post in every group, and make sure you follow the subreddit rules, otherwise your post will get removed. It's also best to post a link to your site in the comment, not the main post. Offer some value so that Redditors are inclined to take the ride with you.

If your posts get removed or you can't seem to get any traction, it's time to try running ads. Reddit ads are easy to create, cheap, and pretty effective. You can target the same subreddits and make the posts even more compelling. 

4. Get feedback from the community

It's worth posting in business subreddits to get feedback from the business community. Some great places to start are r/Business_Ideas , r/EntrepreneurRideAlong , and r/Startup_Ideas .

Once you've executed on everything, it's time to assess the results. Ask yourself:

Did your post gain enough traction to make a decision? 

Do the communities show an interest in what you're trying to build? 

Did you make any sales?

What did you learn about the problem/solution in the process?

It should be relatively obvious whether your idea is one worth pursuing or if you need to pivot. Either way, this process will help you get closer to building something people actually want—and are willing to pay for.

If your problem-solution is good enough, you should be able to generate some pre-sales to help fund your venture . It's worked for me, and I hope it works for you.

This was a guest post from Luciano Viterale , a freelance content writer and growth hacker, who writes about marketing, business, and personal development. Want to see your work on the Zapier blog? Read our guidelines , and get in touch.

Get productivity tips delivered straight to your inbox

We’ll email you 1-3 times per week—and never share your information.

Luciano Viterale picture

Luciano Viterale

Luciano is a writer and growth marketing consultant. He co-founded Ticker Nerd, an investing newsletter that has since been acquired. He also holds a Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) degree from The University of Sydney. Now Luciano blogs about email marketing, copywriting, business, and SEO. When he's not working, he's spending time with his dog or spearfishing with his brothers. Connect with him at lucianoviterale.com.

  • Small business
  • Entrepreneurship

Related articles

Hero image with an icon representing project proposals

How to write a business letter: Formatting guide + template

How to write a business letter: Formatting...

PDF icon, which looks like a blank page with the top-right corner folded inward, against a peach-colored background.

How to write a statement of work (with template and example)

How to write a statement of work (with...

Hero image with an icon of a Gantt chart for product roadmaps and project management

21 project management templates to organize any workflow

21 project management templates to organize...

Hero image with an icon representing company core values

Company core values: AI core value generator (and 8 examples)

Company core values: AI core value generator...

Improve your productivity automatically. Use Zapier to get your apps working together.

A Zap with the trigger 'When I get a new lead from Facebook,' and the action 'Notify my team in Slack'

How Entrepreneurs Can Find the Right Problem to Solve

As an entrepreneur, how confident are you that you fully understand your customer’s pain points or their job to be done? Entrepreneurs I first meet tend to start selling me on their solution before explaining the problem they are trying to solve. There is little evidence that they’ve done true discovery work to validate the problem or their target customers.

While gut feel or personal experience with a problem can be a strong signal there is a problem to solve, without proper product discovery work you won’t truly know if you have a winning solution.

For those who profess having done proper discovery to validate a problem but don’t yet have a product, my follow-up question is: “How do you know people or companies will use your product?” Answers are equally discouraging. More often than not, I hear examples of interest tests, such as hits on social media posts or answers to surveys that are so biased it’s hard to trust the results. Further, entrepreneurs may have a good hunch there’s a job to be done that needs improving or replacing, but they can’t describe where in the customer journey they can truly make an impact.

I’m a big fan of confident founders who are passionate about their idea, but a little humility and a lot of discovery work can determine whether there’s a winning solution and save a lot of wasted time and money building the wrong thing. If fundraising is also a consideration, being able to have real data vs. gut feelings and biased test results can be the difference between a modest angel round and a strongly led seed- or A-round.

I’ve recently written an in-depth look at this topic, Product Discovery 101 , which I encourage you to read. Here are some highlights.

Interest vs. problem testing

“We had 1,000 clicks on our Facebook ad in the first 48 hours.”

“Our conversion rate from click to sign-up was 50 percent.”

“We interviewed a bunch of people and they said they’d use our product if we built it.”

These quotes suggest the entrepreneurs may have found an audience interested enough to click on an ad and provide an email addresses, but they still haven’t proven anything about the usefulness of their product, that it solves a real pain point, or that their target customer is willing to pay for the fix. If you plan to do interest tests, here are several approaches (among many) to consider:

  • Social media . Great for finding your audience, social outreach should be done on multiple platforms and carefully crafted to answer only one or two hypotheses. These hypotheses are commonly, “Is this where we can reach this audience if we want to market to them?” and “Are they interested enough to click and learn more?”
  • Website landing pages . These are the best locations to capture interest, email addresses, and demographic data. If your potential customers found you through social media tests or googling, you’ve proven they were interested enough to learn more, that your search engine optimization works, and that they trust you or care enough about the problem you wish to solve that they’ll provide insight into who they are.
  • Surveys . Surveys are difficult to design and often capture random and subjective information instead of getting real data to inform your product. Great surveys are 10 questions or less, reflective in nature (“How many times did you buy “X” in the last month?”) and data-centric (“How often do you order takeout for dinner?).

Problem validation

Early in the process, more important than interest tests are tests that validate there is a problem worth solving and where exactly a product can be most successful in solving that problem. Validating hypotheses about the problem through a variety of methods is going to lead to a far better outcome than clicks on a Facebook ad.

Consider trying these different types of problem-validation tests in your discovery process:

  • Interviews . Similar to surveys, interviews are as much art as science. It is incredibly easy to lead a witness, bias answers, and hear what we want to hear in an interview. The best guide for conducting a proper discovery interview is Rob Fitzpatrick’s book The Mom Test , which I encourage every entrepreneur and product manager I work with to read.
  • Ethnography . Observing prospects performing the job you hope to improve or replace can be extremely insightful. You may find hacks they would never tell you about in an interview or discover a whole new set of problems in their process.
  • Emotional journaling or mapping . Having a prospect journal or map out their process and highlight how they feel along the way can pinpoint exactly where they are most frustrated in their process. This is also a great technique if you can’t observe the prospect in the setting where the problem exists.
  • Journey mapping . Bring together all your discovery work to identify where you found patterns of highs and lows. These may surprise you; often, where you hypothesized there was the most pain in a process may be somewhere completely different.
  • (Don’t do) focus groups . I am generally not a fan of this form of discovery. It lends itself to groupthink and can produce false results. Focus groups can be useful later in the product cycle when you want to get reactions to branding or observe groups of people using your product if it’s a tangible item.

Prototype testing

The best way to validate that a problem exists is to actually insert yourself into the process and learn by doing. These tests lean toward solution building, but the idea is that you’re doing tests without building anything, or building very little, to get clarity on the problem and the customer. Common forms of these tests include:

  • Lo-fidelity concierge testing . Jump right in and assume part of the role that your product might fill in the future. If you were coming up with a new restaurant reservation system, this may involve a phone conversation with the party needing a reservation and having you do the actual booking for them, perhaps even texting them to confirm their reservation. The key to success of these early tests is to resist the temptation to correct your customer—just go with them on their user experience. You can tweak things along the way as you learn more about what works and what doesn’t.
  • Wizard of Oz (WoZ) testing . WoZ allows you to test a product without the need for a fully built-out prototype. The customer won’t know that you are working behind the scenes to simulate the experience. A former student of mine with a software engineering background resisted the temptation to code a solution and instead created a WoZ test by cobbling together Soundcloud, Dropbox, texting, and a high-fidelity mock front-end. After dozens of people used this method and she understood what they needed, she officially built and launched the product .
  • Prototypes . Build small runs of your future product using 3D printing, sewing, or even a pop-up restaurant as ways to test your concept and receive feedback before spending too much money.
  • Competitive analogs . Having target customers use existing similar products can be as telling as using the product you hope to create. Try tools like UserTesting , which allows prospects to walk through how they use a current competitive product. Having target customers use a competitive product for a week or two can also be insightful.
  • Expert testing . You may be working in an area where you are no expert, but you have a hunch it’s a white space ripe for disruption. If you don’t have access to the experts or their customers, find or create a space for them to connect and observe through their experiences. This could be as simple as finding them on Quora or Reddit and looking at threads of questions that are related to what you’re exploring.

Test early, test often!

With all the options available, there is no excuse for weak validation of problems and target customers early in your product development process. One test, or even a few tests, does not qualify a product as marketable or fundable. The more objective tests you do up front, and iterate on those tests often, the higher the likelihood you’ll land on a great solution that people want to use and buy. To see my full set of recommendations, visit Product Discovery 101 .

This blog post is largely inspired by my course, PM101 at Harvard Business School. I have open-sourced the syllabus for this course here .

About the author

Julia Austin is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School.

[Image by: iStock Photo ]

Other stories by Julia Austin

  • Making the Right Technical Hire
  • How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities
  • Startup or Established Company? Which Is Best for You?

Related reading from the Working Knowledge Archives

Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing

Share your insights below.

  • 16 Feb 2024
  • Research & Ideas

Is Your Workplace Biased Against Introverts?

  • 13 Feb 2024

Breaking Through the Self-Doubt That Keeps Talented Women from Leading

  • 05 Feb 2024

The Middle Manager of the Future: More Coaching, Less Commanding

  • 24 Jan 2024

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

  • 25 Jan 2022

More Proof That Money Can Buy Happiness (or a Life with Less Stress)

Julia B. Austin

  • Entrepreneurship
  • Independent Innovation and Invention
  • Product Development

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

How to Identify the Right Problems to Solve

An image of two people collaborating at a desk with a laptop in an office

It might sound basic, but it can be easy to forget: It's important to really understand the problems you're facing before you try to solve them.

Without a solid understanding of the issues at hand, you risk wasting time and resources, delaying the solutions to the actual problems.

So, how do you make sure you and your team are solving the right problems?

In this post, we’ll outline just how to do that with a step-by-step process that anyone can follow, whether the problems you are facing are large or small.

How to avoid solving the wrong problems

People often solve the wrong problems due to inadequate understanding, or focusing too closely on a single aspect of a larger problem. Asking the right questions can help uncover the root cause, as well as the potential risks that should be considered to avoid misallocating resources.

How do you build understanding? There are two tried and true methods — research and brainstorming.

Research allows you to build on your internal knowledge with outside information that may add layers or nuance to what you already know. In some cases, you may discover that what seems like a large problem internally doesn’t affect the user experience significantly (and, of course, the opposite can also be true). Try conducting a discovery meeting to better understand the problem at hand.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming (especially with a diverse array of stakeholders) helps you consider every angle of a problem, rather than examining only from a familiar perspective. This fosters outside-the-box thinking and opens up more avenues to success.

Risks of misdiagnosing root causes

If you don't identify the real cause of a problem, it can have serious negative consequences. You might waste time and money trying to fix the wrong thing, and then have to start over — all the while, the original problem is still affecting your business.

Taking the time to identify the underlying issue is essential. It’s also important to consider different approaches and perspectives, and explore the possible impacts of each potential solution.

Think about how the desired outcome could be achieved in a variety of ways — there may be solutions that address the main pain points and require fewer resources.

Only after considering the whole context and taking the time to identify the root cause(s) is it possible to find the optimal solution.

How to identify (and solve) the right problems

To accurately identify the right problem to solve, it's essential to take the time to understand the root cause. Following these steps helps ensure that the right problem is identified and addressed, and that solutions can be implemented with confidence.

Define the problem

Develop a thorough understanding of the issue by researching and talking to those affected by the problem. Then, create a shared digital space for discussion that centers the problem you’re trying to solve.

A great place to start is to use a template as your visual guide, like the Problem Tree Analysis template below.

An image of the Mural Problem Tree Analysis template

Place the central problem in the middle, making space for brainstorming with your key stakeholders (on them, more below) to help identify root causes and effects.

Note: Defining your problem isn't always straightforward. Drafting a problem statement can help you understand, clarify, and communicate a complex problem more effectively.

Assemble your stakeholders

Bring together a diverse array of stakeholders representing multiple aspects of your team or organization, so that you’ll have a broader view of the problem. (Note: You may want to do a stakeholder mapping exercise to determine whom you should invite to your discussion.)

By leveraging an online platform for brainstorming, you help ensure that:

  • Every stakeholder has a voice in the discussion, and enable both synchronous and async brainstorming should you be working across time zones, or in a hybrid or remote work environment
  • Transparency is built into the process as you collaboratively create a shared document that can be referenced, analyzed, and later used to create action items and assignments

Ask everyone to brainstorm as many causes as they can individually

As your stakeholders analyze the main problem and think of as many potential causes (roots) as they can.

Whether you’re working together in real time or asynchronously, build in a component of individual brainstorming. This helps avoid groupthink and drives faster innovation by helping to create an environment of psychological safety.

  • If you’re brainstorming in real time, Mural’s Private Mode is a great way to get people thinking creatively on their own, by hiding the responses of their teammates until the facilitator brings everyone back together
  • If you’re using asynchronous brainstorming, you may want each individual to create their own document over a set period of time, and then add their feedback to the shared space later to kick off further discussion and analysis
Related: 7 Ground Rules for Brainstorming

Bring everyone back together and briefly discuss the identified causes

Once the initial brainstorming is complete, bring your stakeholders together to see and discuss what the team has identified as the root causes. This isn’t meant to be a voting session (yet) — but a brief look at the feedback so far in order to give better context to the remaining steps in the process.

Ask everyone to brainstorm as many effects as they can individually

Next, ask everyone to repeat the same process as before, only this time focusing on the effects (branches).

Note: To help keep the brainstorming as free as possible, it’s important to make sure that everyone is thinking of the effects based on the central problem, and not trying to directly connect the dots between the roots identified in the earlier step and the downstream effects.

Bring the group together again and reflect on the causes and effects

This step is meant to help further critical thinking and discussion, which may help refine certain ideas or even add more options to the problem tree prior to moving on to a voting session.

Have all your stakeholders vote on the results

Using a framework like the Visualize the Vote template , have each person identify what they feel are the most important causes and effects that have come out of your brainstorming sessions (typically, it’s best to limit everyone to their top 1-3 options).

To do this, give each stakeholder one or more voting tokens that they can place on their top priorities (for example, you might give each person 2 tokens, one red denoting top priority, and one blue denoting second priority — in this way, you can get a sense for what your team feels are the most urgent problems, while also garnering feedback for what action items should come next).

Discuss the results

Once the voting has concluded, have everyone discuss the outcomes. Were there any unexpected findings? How broadly is everyone aligned on priorities? Are there areas of overlap? What resources might be required to take the most popular approach to solving the problem?

Create and assign actionable next steps

Based on the voting session and discussion, begin to build actionable next steps addressing the main problem, while also thinking about which stakeholders should be involved in those steps. With your shared document, your team will be able to refer back to all the brainstorming and analysis to inform future decisions affecting the problem.

Why Mural for more collaborative (and innovative) problem solving

Mural is the only platform that combines the creative space of an online whiteboard with sophisticated facilitator tools and guided methods based on human-centered design principles .

Get started today with one of Mural’s hundreds of templates , and share with unlimited members, all with a Free Forever plan .

{{mural-luma-system="/cta-components"}}

About the authors

Bryan Kitch

Bryan Kitch

Tagged Topics

Related blog posts

how to find problems to solve reddit

10 Brainstorming Techniques for Developing New Ideas

how to find problems to solve reddit

How to encourage thinking outside the box

how to find problems to solve reddit

How to Write Problem Statements You’ll Actually Use

Related blog posts.

how to find problems to solve reddit

Meetings shouldn’t be monologues

how to find problems to solve reddit

Teamwork 2024 Report: This isn't working

how to find problems to solve reddit

The 5 steps of the strategic planning process

Get the free 2023 collaboration trends report.

Extraordinary teamwork isn't an accident

How to find problems to solve

The key to finding problems worth building a SaaS for is to always be looking for pain.

by Bryan Smith | November 25, 2023

Reading Time: 6 min

How to find problems to solve

Source: DALLE, told to extract key phrases from this article, create a prompt and using the style illustrative, colorful, futuristic create an image.

A Common Question

I started a project called Boring SaaS Business Experiment a while back. The goal was to launch two SaaS products as a side hustle.

The most asked questions were variations on “How can I find problems to solve?”

My answer to everyone is, in short,  “Always be looking for pain.”  Then, I evaluate so I can start validating.

Constantly be listening for pain

You can find ideas in surprising places. Some of my favorites are:

  • At the office (assuming you have a 9-5)
  • Friends & family in a professional field
  • Online communities

I almost always look for B2B problems when looking for pains to solve. I’m not interested in B2C (other than my desire to make a game someday).

As long as you’re listening and reading with intention, you’ll find problems to solve.

It’s as simple as that. If you have a problem-solving mindset, you’ll start running across problems constantly.

Warning  — Just because you can solve a problem doesn’t always mean your audience wants or needs you to. My wife can attest to this 😂 but also that I’ve finally learned it.

So what are people saying?

At the office…

One of my Boring Business SaaS experiments was born out of a common problem with many solutions on the market today. But many have too much overhead or have moved upmarket to enterprise buyers, thus making room for me.

Like most ideas at the office, it started with a conversation like this, “Hey, do we have something to let me do X?”

But many other ideas are from being stuck doing a task manually or using an existing software solution that sucks (I’m pretty sure Notion started because one of their founders had to use Confluence).

…many ideas are from being stuck doing a task manually or using an existing software solution that sucks

To Friends & family…

People complain they don’t know an industry well enough to find ideas. That’s fine, but guess who does? Someone in that field.

I know people in construction, legal, medical, and housekeeping in my family. A couple are even business owners. In a simple conversation on how things are going, invariably, something will scream, “There’s a pain in my field.”

Case in point

  • My sister-in-law has a housekeeping business. Running a cleaning business has unique scheduling problems, including billing, etc.
  • My brother-in-law is a lawyer. Wow, talk about an industry behind the curve in technology! Back office problems, legal solution problems, and so on, there’s plenty of room to build something.
  • My wife and another brother-in-law are in the medical field. This one is harder to get into solution-wise because of HIPAA requirements. But it’s a field dominated by one large vendor. There are all sorts of interesting problems at play. And it has a rich history of doctors championing new solutions.
  • Another brother-in-law (Can you tell my wife is from a large family?) was in construction. Again, there are tons of things that could be improved. Tracking building supplies, scheduling subcontractors, invoicing, and more.

I could go on. I have friends in state government, friends working for other software companies, doing all sorts of things. But instead, let me give you an example.

Meet  Wouter IJgosse of DecisionVault Wouter, whom I met in the  MicroConf Connect  community back in 2020, is the founder of  DecisionVault . DecisionVault is a solution that simplifies the intake of legal clients. He’s not a lawyer. His wife is. And that’s where the story of DecisionVault came from. His wife’s own frustration with the software systems and the duplicative work they often required. There had to be a better way. And there was. DecisionVault, a company Wouter started in 2020, is rapidly growing and solving this exact problem. All because Wouter was listening for pain.

Online Communities…

People talk.

They also love to complain.

Somedays, that’s what I think the internet was made for.

But this is good news for you. Because if you’re looking for a problem to solve, a problem people are discussing online is a great place to start.

Amy Hoy is the champion of finding problems this way** . ** She even coined a phrase called  Sales Safari .

A quick recap is:

  • People gather online
  • Find an audience you think you can speak to or help
  • Read what they’re talking about
  • Sort what you’re hearing
  • You’ll see common patterns
  • There are solutions you can provide (not just software!)

Once you get in the mindset, you can’t help but find problems. But is that idea worth solving?

Problem Validation: Is software the solution?

As the saying goes, everything looks like a nail when your only tool is a hammer.

A lot of indie hackers need help at this stage. They have an idea and know how to write software, so they go write software.

But the real question is, is software the right solution?

This is where I lean in and ask more questions, forcing myself to consider the alternatives.

  • Could a simple update to training be a better solution?
  • Could a change in the process fix it?
  • Does it even need to be done?! (Lots of things get done in corporate America that waste time and resources.)

Amongst other things, I’m checking my bias toward software.

Market research — Are there already competitors (I hope so!)

Next, I want to see if there’s already competition. And I’m hoping there is. I’ve already done the “create a new market game” (future article), which is exhausting.

I like boring SaaS problems. Problems that have been solved by others because they’ve done one of the most challenging lifts for me already.  They’ve validated there’s a market already.

Many IndieHackers are afraid of competition. But guess what!? There are 8 billion people on earth. And there are over 334 million companies worldwide.  There’s plenty of room for you.  This is why having a mindset of abundance is so essential.

As I look into competitors, I’m doing the following:

  • I’m evaluating if there is a broader need. Current solutions == yes, no solutions be wary.
  • I’m looking for clues on how big of a market there is (a bunch of people fighting in the same small pond is not a good idea).
  • I’m seeing what people are saying about these companies. Competition is a fantastic source of intel. Looking at what people complain about in their current software is a great way to find your space.
  • I’m looking to see if others are seeking the same pain. And I’m looking to see if their language is the same as the competitors I’ve identified.

Pro tip - I like looking at companies’ language in their hero statement and searching in communities to see if others are asking for solutions that match that language. The more asking, the better.

I like spaces where competition is already happening, AND people are unsure of a solution (thus complaining about the pain).

Also, it’s a great way to start thinking about your positioning.

This is great because next up, I’m thinking about how to reach my audience.

Marketing — How will I reach my audience?

As I dig in, look at the competition, and reflect on how I discovered this pain, I ask one key question: “Why were they not already aware of a solution?”

  • Maybe they are, but what they see in the market doesn’t match their need?
  • Perhaps they are priced out?
  • Maybe they’re not the actual purchaser? In other words, there may be demand, but no one is willing to pay?
  • Perhaps they weren’t aware of a solution, so there’s a market mismatch in positioning and pain? (See the pro tip above)
  • The list goes on.

I’m asking myself these questions because  before committing to an idea, I always want to know what my marketing plan will look like.

That’s great, but how do I select one idea over another?

I’m probably thinking about 5 to 10 ideas at any given time. That’s why I could rapidly come up with my two choices for my Boring SaaS Business Experiment.

At this point, for all the ideas I’m deciding from, I’ve:

  • Decided there is a pain worth solving for because...
  • There’s competition.
  • The market is big enough for me, too.
  • I have an idea of how I can reach them.
  • And I care about the problem enough to grind it out. Building a SaaS is challenging on the best of days.  If you’re not passionate about the problem, walk away.

The last one is a big one. There are plenty of ideas. Find the ones you’re interested in.

So there you have it. That’s how I find ideas and evaluate them. Ultimately, I’m looking for ones where the market is big enough, and it fits my interests.

Is there another way to evaluate ideas?

Jason Cohen  of WPEngine and SmartBear (you probably already know his blog  longform.asmartbear.com ) thinks so. He’s has a great post, “ Excuse me, is there a problem? ”

He’s noticed something I’ve seen as well. Many people are trying to solve problems that are not viable to build a business. Not even a solopreneur company.

Check out the article. It’s written with indie hackers in mind.  He provides an excellent evaluation flow diagram and an interesting rubric to evaluate ideas.

Join the ProductFoundry Newsletter

Get content like this each week in your inbox. Signup for weekly insights into making great SaaS products and companies.

How Entrepreneurs Can Find the Right Problem to Solve

  • December 06, 2021

How Entrepreneurs Can Find the Right Problem to Solve

Look to your friends, family and colleagues.

People love to gossip and complain, and this is prime research material for figuring out annoying problems people may be facing in their lives. Now take things with a grain of salt as people tend to exaggerate stories, but there’s always a grain of truth somewhere. Speaking to your own family and friends helps you gain insight into perspectives from multiple ages and demographics. Oftentimes the problems that you may find, may come from a collection of multiple small details and events. Take advantage of your social nights having dinner or drinks with friends to do research and gain valuable insights on pain points. If you’ve exhausted your network, expand it - the easiest way to find problems is just to listen.

Scour online forums and question sites like Quora & Reddit.

In our digital age, aside from telling your friends about your problems, the other go-to solution for help is to either ask for help on online forums or sites, or rant on them. This is valuable material to offer insights of larger, more macro problems. For example, if there’s a lot of people asking for help in working with colleagues that speak different languages, and there isn't a clear cut solution being offered, that’s an insight you could then build upon. 

Interest does not mean you’re solving a problem.

Great, so you’ve come up with a rough idea of a problem or product and you want to test it. Well, while early interest may suggest that there is an audience that is willing to interact with your ads or socials, it doesn’t necessarily mean the product is viable. However interest is still a really good sign that you can use to show traction to secure early investment. 

Alternatively, focus on validating the problem you’ve unearthed through a series of interviews and discussion with potential customers, and using techniques like Ethnography, Emotional Journaling and Journey Mapping. These provide valuable insights that will help predict the sustainability of this business in the future. If a business solves a real need, it can last, if not, even if there’s sales, it’s likely to be a fad.

Your Most Valuable Player is your Minimum Viable Product.

If you’ve ever attended an innovation masterclass hosted by your school or work, you’ve probably had to prototype something. So work towards building the minimum version of your product in order to do proper tests and market research. Create simple tests for each feature to validate your solution and problem and also understand the user better.

You can also consider Wizard of Oz (WoZ) testing, where you work behind the scenes to simulate the product, for example by replacing the AI in a chatbot, or manually drawing from different resources rather than coding an app initially. This allows you to spend less time and money upfront before knowing if a product is viable for the market.

Test early, test often, and never ever stop.

There’s countless options available to test and validate your problems and target customers early in the business. One test is not enough, and the more you test, the more insights you gain that will help you continually refine your business and ensure sustainability in the long term. Even as the business continues to grow, testing helps you ensure you’re continuing to provide value and maintaining your sustainability.

If you’re still stuck on how to start your business, check out our free lean business template and tips on how to plan out your business.

True Digital Park is Southeast Asia's largest tech and startup hub, spanning over 200,000 sqm. The park is a critical driver for the development of the startup and innovation ecosystem in Thailand. All under one roof, startups, entrepreneurs, tech companies, investors, accelerators, incubators, academies and government agencies co-exist in our interconnected ecosystem.

  • Digital Marketing

You May Like

Latest update on SEO and Facebook algorithms

Latest update on SEO and Facebook algorithms

True Digital Park สถานที่จัดงานอีเว้นท์ที่ครบวงจรในย่านสุขุมวิท

True Digital Park สถานที่จัดงานอีเว้นท์ที่ครบวงจรในย่านสุขุมวิท

TDPK Highway to Success 2019!!

TDPK Highway to Success 2019!!

Feel free to contact us or visit, us to check out our spaces.

101 Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok 10260 Thailand

02 009 1101

Codeforces

Atcoder ABC #342 Solution Discussion

ICPC North America South Division Official Broadcast

ICPC Pacific Northwest Regional Official Broadcast

New comment(s)

  • Submissions

SuperJ6's blog

How to Effectively Practice CP + Problem Solving Guide

This is a slight tweak of a practice guide I wrote a while ago on USACO reddit since I thought it could be helpful to people here. Some USACO specific sections or extra clutter I left out here that aren't needed for a general audience. This should cover all general cp advice I have so I never have to retype.

Introduction

This is a post on how I believe is the best method to practice modern day competitive programming based on my experiences. I assume you already have some knowledge and know simple things like binary search and dfs/bfs, but read the footnote if you are complete beginner (never code, solved <50 problems, div2 A/B too difficult, grey or stuck low pupil).

First, a quick tl;dr of the practice strategy before a bunch of specifics and explanation:

In short, mostly you only need to use codeforces (no matter what contest you're training for), find a rating range where you can solve around ~30-40% of the time on your own, and just grind down the problem set tab in reverse order of id (the default sorting). Also take part in every live contest you can, and virtual any live contests you miss. Also, if your primary goal is some goal outside of codeforces (let's say USACO, but could replace with any OI or if ICPC replace instance of OI with ICPC) Approximately once per week (probably on each weekend), I recommend you virtual an OI contest then upsolve the ones you understand the editorial for after. This should be old USACO contests until you finish all in the past 5 or so years, then use OI checklist to find new contests. Make sure you go for subtasks just as you would in real contests when doing so.

Some parts of this method may seem strange to you, so I'll explain in more detail and comment on why I believe it is the best method, and give some proof. If you're too lazy to read all of it, the most important parts of this article are bolded . Also, I am assuming you are able to practice somewhat regularly (at least a few days of practice done each week for multiple months), and this practice is unlikely to work if you don't. However if you really want to improve fast, ideally practice should be daily, no breaks.

Goal of Practice

First off, what is the main goal in practicing efficiently? I would argue you want to come across as many subtle ideas and concepts as quickly as possible and learn to intuitively realize when to apply them. This is what my practice method is centered around.

Another important goal is you should also feel discomfort in effort of trying to think new ideas as much as possible, but don't mistake this as time being confused with discomfort having no idea what to do. Actively making new insights as fast as possible is the state you should be in a lot during live contests and need to endure actively thinking new ideas while trying to not repeat same ideas in your mind. But when you have no clue how to approach/understand a solution to a problem, you are more likely to lose focus and are not helping yourself, so you want to minimize this.

Why Codeforces?

So, why only codeforces? Well, recent codeforces problems do a decently good job of introducing a large variety of concepts, particularly in the 2000+ rating range. Thanks to the large standards of wanting non-standard problems each contests, many small math tricks and greedy techniques are introduced, along with standard algorithms and data structure appearing decently enough. This is why I think they are the best collection of problems, as opposed to many other judges that are more standard and less diverse or innovative. Recent codeforces contests are by far better than old contests however, so that is why you should grind down the problems from most to least recent in the problem set tab. If you have done all contests later than contest 450, you should probably start using another judge and start doing more virtual contests, but at that point you probably don't need this guide.

How to Approach Problems in Practice

Alright, so codeforces seems good. Why only a rating range where you can solve ~30-40% of the time? Shouldn't you be practicing coming up with solutions on your own? Well, like I said earlier, you want to come across as many concepts as quickly as possible. If you're able to solve ~80%+ of the problems you're doing on your own, even if it takes a while, or in fact especially if it takes a while, you are not using your time most effectively, as you were already able to come up with the concept on your own. It is OK to read editorials often , that is where you actually learn new things. Binary search on the problem set tab to find a rating range of problems that fits the ~30-40% specification, and I recommend the rating range to a few hundred points wide. You can just shift range upward whenever lower end feels easier and you're solving more.

Well, the next natural question is how long should you take before reading editorials? I will argue only spend 15m thinking, after that if you're still having ideas keep thinking, but if you're just stuck read the editorial. However, if reading the editorial gives you new ideas continue thinking again. Sure, you may discover a trick you came up with yourself you can use later after a long time thinking, but was it worth spending 3h coming up with the solution on your own when you could've gone through 2 or 3 more problems if you read the editorial instead. However, going through too hard problems is just as bad is going through too easy problems. It is not worth spending 4h understanding a 3000 rated problem when you could learn much more concepts from 4 2300 rated problems in the same amount of time (if that's good for your skill level). That's why I say ~30-40%, this is usually the point where you can understand the editorial relatively quickly but aren't able to see the concepts on your own. Also, this is another reason to use codeforces instead of other sources, the problems are shorter so you can get through more faster and it is easier to find many problems of similar skill level .

Some important notes, however, are to take the 15m of thinking very seriously and implement every problem . This is extremely important!!! you should only be looking at editorial when you are really out of ideas and trying to think longer will just make you unfocused or reiterate old ideas. In other words you should feel mentally exhausted!! (or you're not working thinking hard enough). Don't be lazier than you would be in a contest, don't give up because you don't want to think harder on details, don't think/implement leisurely. It is important to practice making observations on your own, and you should be solving problems in the range more and more often as you go down the problem list, that's how you know you're improving. If you're not improving, you are likely not exhausting yourself thoroughly. You may think you can get through more concepts earlier without implement too, and this would fit the main goal of practice better, however, it's important to always implement every problem that isn't completely trivial, even if you mind solve it on your own, as you will remember it better and often you will realize you didn't understand the details as well as you thought before implementing. Always implement before reading editorial if you think you have idea, even when not sure, and don't look at others implementation before you solve even if you read editorial except for last resort.

I also recommend timing yourself when doing problems, at least while implementing. This will help you stay focused and improve your implement speed (which is important so you don't waste time implementing in contest). If you record your times you should hopefully see yourself getting faster for a fixed problem difficulty :).

When you finish a problem, make sure you reflect on techniques and mindset used and how you could generalize thought process to solve other problems more efficiently (imagine you were teaching someone else best way to approach similar problems). Similarly do this when you learn new algorithms or tricks and imagine how you would come up with on your own. Try to come up with your own list similar to one I have in "extra advice how to think" section. Similarly reflect on what can go wrong and how to consciously avoid mental traps. Also, it can be good to look at others solutions after you finish a problem quickly to see if there are any implementation tricks you don't know, and similarly reflect how you could make your code more concise.

When to Learn Algorithms/Data structures

Next thing to come up is when in this am I supposed to learn new standard algorithms and data structures? I advise when you come across an algorithm or any other concept (maybe math idea) in an editorial you don't know about to immediately find and read an article about it, implement in the context of this problem, and then continue just moving down the problem set tab. You can usually find an article on USACO guide, cp-algorithms, or a codeforces blog. The idea behind this is that algorithms should come up at a rate according to their relevance, so if the algorithm really is important you should see it in more problems soon, and you don't need to go looking for more problems with the topic. Similarly, it is important to see algorithms in context, which is why you should not practice by topic , as you will likely miss out on many more subtle techniques and tricks not in a topics list and get too used to knowing the algorithm used ahead time when you should be trying to figure that out in the 15m thinking time.

However, if you want a break or have other extra time when you can't do problems, reading through random algorithm articles in the locations listed above is a good way to expose you to some new ideas. But it is still more important to be actively solving problems when you can.

Live Contests

The number one thing that probably looks wrong with this practice method, despite the reasonings I gave earlier, is that you seem like you are not practicing solving problems on your own often enough. This is where live contests come in. It is important to take part in as many live contests as possible from every judge you can (except ones where every problem feels too easy) . This is where you practice thinking on your own, and if you look enough there are tons of contests all the time, particularly high quality ones from atcoder and codeforces. You should also upsolve the hardest problem you didn't solve during the contest, however, after that you should just go back to the codeforces problem set grind unless there are more problems from the contest within your practice rating range on codeforces. Lastly, to make sure you're taking enough contest, take every codeforces contest you miss that would be rated for you as a virtual contest.

Also, if your primary objective is some other contest (say USACO/OI but can replace with ICPC), you should do OI virtual about once per week as subtasks are becoming more important in USACO plus probably good to have more extended focus practice anyway. You also want to shift practice to doing mostly OI virtuals the week before a USACO contest begins. Make sure for these virtuals you are going for maximum points like in a real contest which may mean implementing subtasks, not just implementing full solves (or whatever other contest specific traits that differ from codeforces). If you aren't practicing a ton or you feel virtuals are taking too much time away from doing codeforces practice maybe do every other week instead of every week.

Scheduling Practice

This is less important but more just some pointers on scheduling time to practice consistently. I think it is obviously best to practice daily, and it isn't as hard as you may think it is if you build up good habits. I think it is good to have a regularly scheduled time where you can practice each day , as this makes it more of a consistent habit. Similarly, if you can set aside a specific location to practice as well that would be good , as this can give your mindset the habit that a specific time and place is for practicing only, and you build focus**.** Try to practice at least 90m for your scheduled time , but preferably longer. And get off discord!!! when you're practicing in the designated time :clown:.

Besides scheduled practice time, you can probably fit in more practice time in some or many days in different ways as well if you are serious. For example, I think it is good to memorize some problems at the beginning of each day, maybe a bit harder than you'd normally practice, and think about them all day during school, shower, eating, etc., or maybe the same problems for a few days. This helps you practice thinking more on your own. Also, when you have free time in class or while in car and someone else is driving or something, this is a good time to read algorithm articles. When I went to public school I also bought a portable keyboard to practice in class and spent most school lunch days in the library doing problems, but this might be overkill. Point is find all times of day to practice any way possible when you can, but most import is the scheduled practice time.

Adjustments Closer to Big Contest

If you are training for some main goal (hopefully for the past several months at least, following above methods), when you are within a few weeks away of big contest, start spending more practice time on vc's for that contest, and look over the syllabus/relevant ideas for that contest if list exists . Also consider if you are in these pitfalls:

You are too slow at working out ideas or implementation => do more fast-paced contest vc's, time yourself in other practice.

You are bad at allocating time in OI/ICPC style => focus on more relevant vc's and practice subtask allocation, figuring out which problems to work on, and when to move on like in real contest.

Still not able to make big insights that seem to come out of nowhere => try more guessing and some atcoder lol.

Hopefully this was somewhat useful to some of you, and gives you a comprehensive guide on how to practice for USACO and competitive programming in general. Please share this with others if you think it is useful.

For any more experienced people, let me know if there is anything you strongly disagree with what I said, I'd be interested to hear your viewpoint, though you're unlikely to change my mind :).

**I recommend the beginning of the usaco training page to complete beginners . I think it is a good way to start out as it guides you on the basics, and you should be able to start as soon as you know the very basics to a programming language, preferably c++ (you can use codeacademy to learn basics, it should take only a couple days max. you learn other parts about the language as you solve more problems and googling as needed). However, as soon as you finish chapter 1 or the problems feel easy (or if codeforces is still too intimidating maybe hard max finish chapter 2), that is when I recommend you start using this practice method, and perhaps also try some problems from the cses sorting and searching section. However most people reading this should already have some experience.

Sources mentioned: USACO — http://www.usaco.org Codeforces — https://codeforces.com Atcoder — https://atcoder.jp CSES — https://cses.fi/problemset/ Training gate — https://usaco.training OI Checklist — https://oichecklist.pythonanywhere.com Cp-Algorithms — https://cp-algorithms.com USACO Guide — https://usaco.guide Codeacademy — https://www.codecademy.com/catalog/language/c-plus-plus

Extra Advice How to Think to Solve Problems

Overall, just make sure you are always thinking new ideas and repeatedly combining old observations to make new ones. Don't worry about solving all at once, just think one small step at a time! Usually this means think what do you know for sure, then use to guess ideas on properties and direction and check if you can prove, combine your previous observations, then repeat. When really stuck, guess more extreme (it is another thing people who aren't improving don't do enough). Actually write down you're observations and make sure you're writing new things as fast as possible, even when seems small or irrelevant. But for some more direct tips, try going through the following checklist when approaching a problem:

  • look at everything from perspective of binary (both bit representation and splitting things in halves) and graph (pairs in input), or sometimes as geometry coordinates
  • think how information you have can be reused (like dp but more general, eg 2ptr or extending construction, sweepline), ask what is dependent and how, order by dependency. also try making one choice then and get same problem then induct (eg greedy, mst, dp, decision tree like trie, ask "what do i know for sure"), or combine smaller problems to get answer (eg range dp, d&q, mitm), so can reuse info of smaller problem.
  • reduce things to as simple as possible, compact representation of info, get rid of redundant transitions/states/etc. what is minimum needed for condition to be true? when something changes or decision made what is minimum that actually matters? sometimes combine operations into simpler one (eg try turning operation into something can binary exponentiate). bound everything as tight as possible and use to reduce states to consider. is answer/construction equivalent to bounds/minimum conditions (guess when stuck)?
  • make formulas out of everything, expand/rewrite as many ways possible (even simple like |x| -> +-x). think about related formulas to transform (eg combo) and other representations (don't forget matrix/polynomial).
  • visualize everything, draw things out
  • look for structures like montonicity, concavity, etc. (eg bsearch/dp opt) along with new conditions/constraints implied (eg sqrtn distinct of n total), and do this for every part of problem, whether specific part or entire structure of solution
  • go through testcases by hand (both initially with brute force and with your current best ideas), maybe also make generator/brute force checker if stuck to further look for patterns.
  • don't think same things over and over, write down everything you think and try to always write down new ideas, every small new observation is progress and may be able to be combined with other ideas eventually, but rethinking same things will not help
  • think of simplified cases then extend/reduce to them (reduce a[i] = 0/1, array->tree->graph, 2^x->k) or imagine assuming something you wish exists already exists (like data structure, constraint eg for bsearch, previous knowledge, etc.) and solving from there, chances are thing then does exist if helps
  • reverse/change ordering of process (eg change order to simpler like change general add/delete to add/[delete most recent op] offline) or look at inverse (especially for counting) or just view problem in different way in general, restate problem/conditions in as many different ways as you can to get new perspectives. nice transformation usually means right direction (eg difference array).
  • if something reminds you of standard algorithm, or you find too slow solution for some part, think of every way you know how to do that standard thing and see if any modification relates to what you are doing, and think deeply what parts can be changed for specific problem
  • if something seems random in statement like any abnormal constraint or is similar to known problem but different in some way, is probably key to solving so consider why it is put in statement
  • don't forget sometimes can brute force small choices or if too many choices can pick random one or something that stands out (like max/min, only closest on left/right, etc.), extremals is often key. think carefully and guess what not matter if problem seems too hard initially. in constructive/interactive with many options can likely solve with only small subset of options.
  • don't overcomplicate. try multiple directions, if too many steps or edge cases probably not right direction. almost always a nice easily provable solution. guess nice things (eg simplest greedy/construction), hope they work, then check but don't get stuck forcing path. take step back when clowning on small details even if you know it is right general direction
  • try focusing on answer for one element at time instead of entire process (like in counting or creating bsearch condition, local easier to update for queries), or sometimes opposite (eg graph out all solutions, know ahead of time offline). in general change scope of thinking
  • believe you can solve every problem, but also treat every problem as a challenge that you take one step at a time. even most standard ideas you can learn on your own if you treat same way as any other problem
  • if something you remember very vaguely seems similar but you don't remember source and barely remember details, don't waste time trying to remember old thing, just start resolving from scratch
  • as stated by Perpetually_Purple in comment below, sometimes can try to cheese with random/heuristic if running out of time. especially true for OI contests with subtasks
  • sometimes can split problem into parts which can be solved differently based on constraints (eg sqrt decomp, small to large, upd and qry compute different parts, even/odd).
  • also break into independent problems (eg intervals that don't affect each other, solve x and y coordinate separately). when dependent on multiple things, process in order that gets rid of thinking about one and only worry about others (eg sweep one dimension, query other).
  • map things to a canonical form (eg lexographically minimal) or map representations that are equivalent to help with counting or alternate way to view solution. (eg think of greedy idea to get specific configuration then have counting dp mimic the greedy method to not overcount, find simple idea for single query then speed up multiple queries by precomputing conditions when add during greedy to speed up).
  • imagine assuming you know solution ahead of time and analyze or fix choices ahead of time and solve rest, can use this to prove things equivalent, choices not to consider, or properties of optimal configuration.
  • try only computing minimum necessary at each point of time, especially for update/query. can sometimes use amortized/lazy arguments (eg keep track of covered intervals in set, lazy prop on segtree).
  • ask what stays the same and what changes. how does a single operation affect properties of a problem (sum/difference of elements, always progress towards goal, reversable, etc.)? when doing testcases by hand guess these types of things then prove/disprove. use these properties to prove things like which choices are optimal or what is bottleneck to bound on answer.
  • Similar to 3 and 10, try compressing groups of things and solve over those group when relations within them are irrelevant, and keep updating when you can simplify further throughout process (eg compress cycles, scc, biconnected components, directed mst).'
  • When guessing idea, make sure you are listing through all assumptions being made and that those assumptions you know for sure hold true and completely encompass the problem. Also make samples around idea of what you think could go wrong, and use that to help you prove or disprove idea. If you're taking too long disproving wrong ideas, you likely need to go more one step at a time, don't guess extreme until more stuck.
  • If stuck working out details when have main idea, work out more testcases by hand and/or write detailed pseudocode and find what steps you are not entirely sure what they work and think harder. Don't be lazy about writing details!

Also it is good to use problem constraints to guide your initial direction of thinking, but don't let it constrain you to specific ideas. And whatever you do don't misread the problem , better to spend slightly longer reading and understanding correctly than solve wrong thing.

Implementation Tips

First check briefly that you are not missing easier idea/method to implement. That will save most time.

Try to have clear idea of each segment of code you will write, then write as fast as possible. Sometimes you don't have clear idea of entire code you write and only general outline, and that's ok, but in your mind have different parts of code in small chunks and have each small chunk planned out clearly before you write then think if needed before writing next part. Try to keep plan your code to be as concise as possible while still easily readable and make it where you are not rewriting same thing multiple times. If you keep rewriting, you need to step back and plan out better, check your ideas.

Also for debugging, just make a bunch of print statements in code and look for problems. Try to binary search and figure out where in the code the outputs are first not what you'd expect. If you realize some part is not right, don't get stuck making small edits trying to fix, go back to planning and rewrite when clear. Also try working through some examples by hand following steps of code, and read through every single line of code. It is likely the mistake is somewhere where you were sure you couldn't mess up lol.

Also adding one sentence comment to code on main idea of every problem might be nice if you ever need to refer back.

Allocating Time in OI Contest

I'm assuming 3 problems in 4 hours (adjust scale as needed). I usually read all 3 problems in first 15 minutes, then spend about 15 minutes each to think about each problem and decide order of difficulty I find easiest. If I fully mind solve one in that time I immediately implement, otherwise I do as follows. I then try to divide the next three hours to be roughly even among the three problems, and try the problems in order from easiest to hardest.

While focusing on a problem, it is very important to stay focused on only that problem. For most of hour on problem should implement as soon as you full solve but only implement subtasks to test ideas, if you think it help you towards full solution, or you are completely out of new ideas (in which case move on after implementing subtask if u still don't have new ideas). However, if you already use up ~50min for that problem and still don't know full solution and won't reach in next 5min, even if you think you could make more progress, just implement what subtasks you know and move on. It is important to actually move on as you may have wrongly assessed which problem was easiest so you want to have time to try all the problems (this has been my downfall multiple times in past). This means once you move on don't have more lingering thoughts usually and fully focus on next problem.

Math + CS Practice

If you are practicing math olympiad and cs olympiad, or just want some reading material that might help you, try reading some of and doing some problems from this combo book . Overall it will be better for you to just do be actively solving more problems for cp practice, but if you have some other free time it is a pretty good read and cp is basically olympiad combo + data structures + implementation anyway.

Practicing for math olympiad in general will also help you with competitive programming, but if you are only focusing on cp it is better to just work on cp problems.

Extra Motivation

In everything in life, the key to success is learning to find fulfillment in every small step you make towards progress. Related to cp, every problem solved and every day of practice is one step closer to your competitive programming goals. When solving a problem every new observation is one step closer to finding the solution.

Also, make sure you know your priorities and what you really want out of life, don't have regrets. If you really want to be good in cp, stop wasting time, stop taking days off, start solving problems as much as you can and you will find success. Obsess over what you want most until you achieve it.

Tags

How do you find problems to solve?

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?

how to find problems to solve reddit

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!

This is great. Thanks a lot

Echoing this, I keep a list of problems in my todo lists (I have one that's just called "problems"). I add when I stumble across them or struggle with them, and keep on adding and revisiting.

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

  • Learn new stuff = discover new problems
  • 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

Distinguish your interests and interests: Begin by investigating regions you care about or have aptitude in, as it will propel you to handle the difficulties inside those areas.

Pay attention to other people: Take part in discussions with individuals from different foundations, getting some information about their trouble spots and needs. Undivided attention reveals genuine issues worth tending to.

Research and break down patterns: Remain informed about the latest things and arising issues in your field of interest. This can uncover potential issues that are yet to be settled.

Direct studies and criticism meetings: Assemble input from likely clients or clients to figure out their dissatisfactions and regions for development.

Team up and conceptualize: Collaborate with similar people or specialists to conceptualize and produce thoughts. Cooperative reasoning can prompt imaginative answers for existing issues.

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!

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

lol sometimes it feels like people don't want their problems to be solved here in Italy!

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)

Sent you a dm on twitter… can you share another invite?

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:

  • 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.

  • 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.

On point 1. I think those problems are usually too complex for an indie hacker b2b service. I'm a data engineer, and I know what problems companies have in that space. However, it's not easy to build a service that streamlines those issues (many companies are doing this, but not indie hackers)

I hear you: however, I should expand on what I mean here.

An indy hacker is not going streamline processes for a global investment bank; however, they can create something to help a small insurance broker. Someone I know is doing just that ((see here)[ https://www.adviser.ai/life-broker ]).

I think this is a better approach than the, scratch your own itch, marketing tech, tweet scheduling, solutions I see a lot of. Nothing wrong with these solutions, they just seem to rely too much on an audience of fellow indy hackers.

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.

Thanks, added the book to my reading list and the podcast to my podcast app.

Find it on reddit.

Go to the subreddit that you want to be part of.

For example sports.

Then go through the post and the comment and see the votes and engagement and what people are talking about.

From there you can know what people care about and what people are interested on, sometimes its a problem and sometimes it is an opportunity.

For example the sport sub reddit may have somebody post their outdoor gym equipment and then in the comment you might see somebody commenting "is this waterproof" with huge number of upvotes.

So from there you know waterproof gym equipment have some demand.

Here in case you want in detailed step by step : HOW TO SCRAP IDEA FROM REDDIT

Thanks, sounds like a good approach.

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.

Nice, thanks!

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.

This is original advice, different from the others I got so far. Thanks

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

I know this is one of the ways. The issue is that my niche is data engineering, and it's a space where easy solutions are not easy to develop and market. I'd like to find something simpler to start with.

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 .

Really interesting article!

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!

Thanks for your reply! Ther's a lot to go through here

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!

Nice framework! Thanks

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.

I have tried to do this already. The problem is that I don't get exposed to the right situations (at least that's the impression). I'd like to find possible B2B ideas/problems rather than B2C (which is what I get from friends, for instance).

That makes total sense. Where do you work? Can you try to work at, work with or make a lot of contacts with people that work for your would-be customers?

There are millions of problems in this space. The first thing that came to mind:

I'm in sales. I want to know when any of my contacts change jobs. If I have a good relationship with Steve, and I sold him in the past, I'll want to know when he moves to a new company. If there was a gmail plugin that took all my contacts (anyone that ever emailed me) and followed them on LinkedIn or other socials. Then it would send me an email every Monday with a list of people that switched jobs - Name / New Company / From Old Company.

These businesses exist for Enterprise companies, but I haven't seen anything for SMB. Let me know if you ever want to jam on ideas.

Paul Graham has great essays on this

Do you have the link?

Are you referring to this? http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

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

Thanks for the links!

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).

This is a good one. It's not easy to find the right people, though. I also have a lot of interactions with developers and I agree it's a bit oversaturated.

This comment was deleted 8 days ago.

This comment was deleted 7 months ago.

how to find problems to solve reddit

Friday Q&A: How Can I Find Problems to Solve (To Come Up With Business Ideas)?

Every Friday, we’re answering your questions about business, startups, customer success and more.

Alex Turnbull avatar

Alex Turnbull

3 Min read · 1902 shares

Happy Friday!

how to find problems to solve reddit

First, a caveat: I don’t need to tell anyone that building a business is really, really hard. That’s obvious.

But in my experience—and based on what I’ve learned from other founders I’ve spoken with—it’s even harder to build a business when you’re not scratching your own itch. Ultimately, it’s that passion for solving my own problem that keeps me going through the lowest of the lows, and I know that many other founders feel the same way.

Neil Patel acknowledged this, too, in our interview on the blog :

You have to find something you’re passionate about that solves real problems for people. Advice Monkey didn’t work out and it didn’t work out because I created it for the wrong reasons. I wasn’t passionate about it.

With that said, there are plenty of founders whose passion is simply for solving problems for people, whether they share those problems or not.

And if that’s your goal, I support you 100%, and I do think you have just as strong of a shot as someone filling their own hole.

In fact, many of the business ideas I’ve added to my own list over the years have come from other people sharing their frustrations with me about something in their lives (and not mine).

Here are two things I would do:

1) Start paying attention very deeply.

In customer development, perhaps the biggest mistake that I made in the beginning was letting my assumptions take priority over my ears.

Here’s what I mean: I’d go into interactions with assumptions about who the person was, what they wanted, what they didn’t want, and what their challenges and goals were. I’d listen to what they said, but I was only really listening for things that would either prove or disprove my assumptions, rather than listening to everything and trying to understand what was truly important.

For example, I’d assume that the customer wanted a live chat feature. After the conversation, I could only tell you whether that assumption was correct or incorrect. What I couldn’t tell you—until I started actively listening better—was that some of the offhand comments that the customer made were very clear indicators that perhaps chat wasn’t even that important to them compared to, say, a knowledge base.

When you begin to listen more actively, you begin to hear the little things that people complain about, often in the form of comments that seem like throwaways at the time, but actually indicate burning pains that need solving. These conversations, whether with prospects, co‑workers, friends or just about anyone else, can become huge sources of business ideas.

2) Search proactively for people looking for solutions.

Another thing that I’ve seen work for some—it’s a tactic that we sometimes use to source blog post ideas—is searching online communities for problems that people are facing.

Search, in quotes, for words and phrases that indicate that the poster is frustrated by something or looking to solve a problem:

  • “How do you”
  • “Can’t seem to”

Here’s an example:

how to find problems to solve reddit

You can get great ideas by running searches like this on reddit, Twitter, or just about any community where a target market might congregate online.

I’m also very curious to hear what other readers have done here. Let me know in the comments!

You might also enjoy

Entrepreneurship  ·  8 Min read

Becoming an Entrepreneur: How I Started My Very First Business with Just $300

Becoming an entrepreneur isn’t easy. Here’s my story of using $300 to start my very first business, and how I almost lost everything in the first 15 minutes.

Alex Turnbull CEO & Founder @Groove

Entrepreneurship  ·  10 Min read

The Top 5 Leadership Qualities a First-Time Founder Should Practice

Very few of us are "natural-born leaders". Luckily, the essential leadership qualities needed to be successful can be learned and developed.

Elen Veenpere avatar

Elen Veenpere

Entrepreneurship  ·  9 Min read

How to Use Upselling to Increase Customer Happiness, Retention and Revenue

Upselling is a dirty word to many people, but in reality it doesn’t need to be. Learn how to upsell so that you get happier and more loyal customers.

Join +250,000 of your peers

Don’t miss out on the latest tips, tools, and tactics at the forefront of customer support.

Try searching for

Download on App Store

  • Solve equations and inequalities
  • Simplify expressions
  • Factor polynomials
  • Graph equations and inequalities
  • Advanced solvers
  • All solvers
  • Arithmetics
  • Determinant
  • Percentages
  • Scientific Notation
  • Inequalities

Download on App Store

What can QuickMath do?

QuickMath will automatically answer the most common problems in algebra, equations and calculus faced by high-school and college students.

  • The algebra section allows you to expand, factor or simplify virtually any expression you choose. It also has commands for splitting fractions into partial fractions, combining several fractions into one and cancelling common factors within a fraction.
  • The equations section lets you solve an equation or system of equations. You can usually find the exact answer or, if necessary, a numerical answer to almost any accuracy you require.
  • The inequalities section lets you solve an inequality or a system of inequalities for a single variable. You can also plot inequalities in two variables.
  • The calculus section will carry out differentiation as well as definite and indefinite integration.
  • The matrices section contains commands for the arithmetic manipulation of matrices.
  • The graphs section contains commands for plotting equations and inequalities.
  • The numbers section has a percentages command for explaining the most common types of percentage problems and a section for dealing with scientific notation.

Math Topics

More solvers.

  • Add Fractions
  • Simplify Fractions
  • Get Inspired
  • Announcements

Gemini 1.5: Our next-generation model, now available for Private Preview in Google AI Studio

February 15, 2024

how to find problems to solve reddit

Last week, we released Gemini 1.0 Ultra in Gemini Advanced. You can try it out now by signing up for a Gemini Advanced subscription . The 1.0 Ultra model, accessible via the Gemini API, has seen a lot of interest and continues to roll out to select developers and partners in Google AI Studio .

Today, we’re also excited to introduce our next-generation Gemini 1.5 model , which uses a new Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) approach to improve efficiency. It routes your request to a group of smaller "expert” neural networks so responses are faster and higher quality.

Developers can sign up for our Private Preview of Gemini 1.5 Pro , our mid-sized multimodal model optimized for scaling across a wide-range of tasks. The model features a new, experimental 1 million token context window, and will be available to try out in  Google AI Studio . Google AI Studio is the fastest way to build with Gemini models and enables developers to easily integrate the Gemini API in their applications. It’s available in 38 languages across 180+ countries and territories .

1,000,000 tokens: Unlocking new use cases for developers

Before today, the largest context window in the world for a publicly available large language model was 200,000 tokens. We’ve been able to significantly increase this — running up to 1 million tokens consistently, achieving the longest context window of any large-scale foundation model. Gemini 1.5 Pro will come with a 128,000 token context window by default, but today’s Private Preview will have access to the experimental 1 million token context window.

We’re excited about the new possibilities that larger context windows enable. You can directly upload large PDFs, code repositories, or even lengthy videos as prompts in Google AI Studio. Gemini 1.5 Pro will then reason across modalities and output text.

Upload multiple files and ask questions We’ve added the ability for developers to upload multiple files, like PDFs, and ask questions in Google AI Studio. The larger context window allows the model to take in more information — making the output more consistent, relevant and useful. With this 1 million token context window, we’ve been able to load in over 700,000 words of text in one go. Gemini 1.5 Pro can find and reason from particular quotes across the Apollo 11 PDF transcript. 
[Video sped up for demo purposes]
Query an entire code repository The large context window also enables a deep analysis of an entire codebase, helping Gemini models grasp complex relationships, patterns, and understanding of code. A developer could upload a new codebase directly from their computer or via Google Drive, and use the model to onboard quickly and gain an understanding of the code. Gemini 1.5 Pro can help developers boost productivity when learning a new codebase.  
Add a full length video Gemini 1.5 Pro can also reason across up to 1 hour of video. When you attach a video, Google AI Studio breaks it down into thousands of frames (without audio), and then you can perform highly sophisticated reasoning and problem-solving tasks since the Gemini models are multimodal. Gemini 1.5 Pro can perform reasoning and problem-solving tasks across video and other visual inputs.  

More ways for developers to build with Gemini models

In addition to bringing you the latest model innovations, we’re also making it easier for you to build with Gemini:

Easy tuning. Provide a set of examples, and you can customize Gemini for your specific needs in minutes from inside Google AI Studio. This feature rolls out in the next few days. 
New developer surfaces . Integrate the Gemini API to build new AI-powered features today with new Firebase Extensions , across your development workspace in Project IDX , or with our newly released Google AI Dart SDK . 
Lower pricing for Gemini 1.0 Pro . We’re also updating the 1.0 Pro model, which offers a good balance of cost and performance for many AI tasks. Today’s stable version is priced 50% less for text inputs and 25% less for outputs than previously announced. The upcoming pay-as-you-go plans for AI Studio are coming soon.

Since December, developers of all sizes have been building with Gemini models, and we’re excited to turn cutting edge research into early developer products in Google AI Studio . Expect some latency in this preview version due to the experimental nature of the large context window feature, but we’re excited to start a phased rollout as we continue to fine-tune the model and get your feedback. We hope you enjoy experimenting with it early on, like we have.

Advertisement

Supported by

Poll Ranks Biden as 14th-Best President, With Trump Last

President Biden may owe his place in the top third to his predecessor: Mr. Biden’s signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Donald J. Trump from the Oval Office.

  • Share full article

President Biden standing at the top of the steps leading to Air Force One.

By Peter Baker

Peter Baker has covered the past five presidents, ranked seventh, 12th, 14th, 32nd and 45th in the survey.

President Biden has not had a lot of fun perusing polls lately. He has a lower approval rating than every president going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower at this stage of their tenures, and he trails former President Donald J. Trump in a fall rematch. But Mr. Biden can take solace from one survey in which he is way out in front of Mr. Trump.

A new poll of historians coming out on Presidents’ Day weekend ranks Mr. Biden as the 14th-best president in American history, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant. While that may not get Mr. Biden a spot on Mount Rushmore, it certainly puts him well ahead of Mr. Trump, who places dead last as the worst president ever.

Indeed, Mr. Biden may owe his place in the top third in part to Mr. Trump. Although he has claims to a historical legacy by managing the end of the Covid pandemic; rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure; and leading an international coalition against Russian aggression, Mr. Biden’s signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Mr. Trump from the Oval Office.

“Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” wrote Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, the college professors who conducted the survey and announced the results in The Los Angeles Times .

Mr. Trump might not care much what a bunch of academics think, but for what it’s worth he fares badly even among the self-identified Republican historians. Finishing 45th overall, Mr. Trump trails even the mid-19th-century failures who blundered the country into a civil war or botched its aftermath like James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson.

Judging modern-day presidents, of course, is a hazardous exercise, one shaped by the politics of the moment and not necessarily reflective of how history will look a century from now. Even long-ago presidents can move up or down such polls depending on the changing cultural mores of the times the surveys are conducted.

For instance, Barack Obama, finishing at No. 7 this year, is up nine places since 2015, as is Grant, now ranked 17th. On the other hand, Andrew Jackson has fallen 12 places to 21st while Wilson (15th) and Reagan (16th) have each fallen five places.

At least some of that may owe to the increasing contemporary focus on racial justice. Mr. Obama, of course, was the nation’s first Black president, and Grant’s war against the Ku Klux Klan has come to balance out the corruption of his administration. But more attention today has focused on Jackson’s brutal campaigns against Native Americans and his “Trail of Tears” forced removal of Indigenous communities, and Wilson’s racist views and resegregation of parts of the federal government.

As usual, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson top the list, and historians generally share similar views of many presidents regardless of their own personal ideology or partisan affiliation. But some modern presidents generate more splits among the historians along party lines.

Among Republican scholars, for instance, Reagan finishes fifth, George H.W. Bush 11th, Mr. Obama 15th and Mr. Biden 30th, while among Democratic historians, Reagan is 18th, Mr. Bush 19th, Mr. Obama sixth and Mr. Biden 13th. Other than Grant and Mr. Biden, the biggest disparity is over George W. Bush, who is ranked 19th among Republicans and 33rd among Democrats.

Intriguingly, one modern president who generates little partisan difference is Bill Clinton. In fact, Republicans rank him slightly higher, at 10th, than Democrats do, at 12th, perhaps reflecting some #MeToo era rethinking and liberal unease over his centrist politics.

The survey, conducted by Mr. Vaughn, an associate professor of political science at Coastal Carolina University, and Mr. Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, was based on 154 responses from scholars across the country.

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the last five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More about Peter Baker

Our Coverage of the 2024 Presidential Election

News and Analysis

At the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, which is currently underway in Washington, the question is not which Republican will face off against President Biden in November, but rather who will join former President Donald Trump atop the ticket as his running mate .

Speaking at a Christian media convention in Nashville, Trump claimed that a “radical left, corrupt political class” was persecuting Christians and framed the election as a battle against a “wicked” system .

Anger within the Democratic Party over Biden’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza has been building for months. Michigan’s upcoming primary will put that discontent on the ballot for the first time .

Nikki Haley’s struggles to gain traction ahead of South Carolina’s Republican primary stem in part from a demographic fact : Nearly 10% of the state’s voters were not there when she left the governor’s mansion in 2017, and many of the newcomers have an affection for Trump. How did the state become Trump country ?

Fact-Checking Biden: During campaign and public events in recent weeks, Biden has made some misleading statements  about taxes, industry, jobs and more.

A Right-Wing Nerve Center:  The Conservative Partnership Institute has become a breeding ground for the next generation of Trump loyalists and an incubator for policies he might pursue. Its fast growth is raising questions .

 On Wall Street:  Investors are already thinking about how financial markets might respond to the outcome of a Biden-Trump rematch , and how they should trade to prepare for it.

how to find problems to solve reddit

How to Sell and Where to Get the Best Prices

After plundering a boatload of loot in Skull and Bones, you will want to sell some of your booty. While there are plenty of places to offload your goods for Silver, there are a few key things to keep in mind, like which region you are selling in and the type of vendor you are selling too.

Where To Sell

SB Selling.jpeg

You can sell items at any vendor in Skull and Bones. At full ports like Sainte-Anne and Telok Penjarah, you can sell items at any of the various shops, like Commodity Vendor, Blacksmith, or Carpenter. When out exploring the seas, you can sell items at both locations where you can dock and walk around and at locations that you can plunder but not get out at. Just interact with the vendor at any of these locations and go to the sell tab. While selling is easy, getting the best price isn't. You can only sell items currently in your Cargo, items in Storage will have to be moved to Cargo before selling.

How To Get The Best Prices

You likely have noticed that sometimes there is an arrow next to the item you are selling or buying. There is either a red downward arrow or a green upward arrow. This indicates if you selling an item for a worse price than normal or a better one. There will occasionally be two arrows to further signify if its a significantly better/worse deal. If there are no arrows next to the item, you are getting the standard amount of Silver for it.

Luckily, these changes in sell prices aren't random and you can figure out ahead of time if you are getting a better or worse deal. For commodities, which are items that exist to either be sold or delivered as part of a contract, it will say in the item description in what regions or to what factions they are meant to be sold. If you take the commodity to a vendor in the specified area, you will get more Silver than normal. You can also view what is in high demand and what is in plentiful supply by opening the map and zooming out to the second highest level. This will put a tab on the side of the screen that lists out the commodities, making it easy to figure out the best place to sell items.

Most other items don't get their prices impacted by which vendor you are at, except for weapons and other ship equipment. If you take unwanted to ship weapons or parts to the blacksmith or carpenter to get a better price.

Up Next: How To Board Enemies

Top guide sections.

  • All Weapons
  • Best Ships to Get Early
  • Ship Combat Tips - How To Conquer Enemy Ships
  • How To Enter PvP Combat

Was this guide helpful?

In this guide.

Skull and Bones

What does SOS mode on iPhone mean? Symbol appears during AT&T outage Thursday

how to find problems to solve reddit

Thousands of customers woke up Thursday morning to an SOS symbol at the top of their iPhones and no service due to a nationwide telecommunications outage .

The outages were impacting AT&T customers the most, although services from Verizon, Cricket Wireless and T-Mobile were also affected. It also began to impact essential public services, including people’s ability to call emergency responders.

The outages have continued through Thursday morning, with more than 70,000 AT&T customers reporting outages as of 8:56 a.m. ET, according to Downdetector.com .

What does the SOS symbol mean, and how does it connect to the outage? Here's what to know.

AT&T down: Tens of thousands report AT&T service outage; Verizon and T-Mobile users also claim issues

What does the SOS symbol on the iPhone mean?

During Thursday's outage, an SOS symbol appeared on the screens of iPhone users with AT&T (in the same place where cell service bars are normally shown).

The SOS symbol can appear in the status bar of iPhones and iPads, meaning devices aren't connected to a cellular network. It also means there is a cellular network "available for emergency calls,"  Apple's support website  states.

The SOS feature is available on iPhones and iPads in the U.S., Australia and Canada.

"When you make a call with SOS, your iPhone automatically calls the local emergency number and shares your location information with emergency services," according to Apple. "In some countries and regions, you might need to choose the service that you need.

After making an emergency call, your iPhone alerts any emergency contacts designated in your phone.

Apple says all iPhone models 14 or later can also use Emergency SOS via satellite to text emergency services when no cellular and Wi-Fi coverage is available.

Contributing: Gabe Hauari and Christopher Cann, USA TODAY.

COMMENTS

  1. The search for problems to solve

    1 Share u/swalden123 • 1 yr. ago Update on r/problemhunt Hi Guys, I'm going to start reviving this subreddit to focus on finding new problems to solve. Starting with adding an auto mod so posts must follow this format - Problems must start with [Problem] - Resources to help problem hunting must start with [ProblemHunting] 4 Share u/mrziggy123

  2. Is it bad practice to look at the solutions when unable to ...

    If you are studying for an exam an you are actually rote learning excercises - which you should avoid as much as you can but, anyway - then checking the solutions manual is your friends, since it can help you rote learn how to solve excercises. Nevertheless, you should revisit the same stuff after your exam so as to actually grab that knowledge.

  3. How to utilize Reddit to find real problems to solve

    If you tried to find problems to solve by yourself, probably you searched for some keywords on various platforms. Let's take Reddit, for example. It's a huge database of user submissions where they discuss different topics, tell about their experience, ask questions, and so on.

  4. How to find problems to solve on Reddit

    1. Finding your audience's communities Reddit is a massive place, and the first thing we'll do is find the lovely corner where the Gardeners hang out. I wrote a detailed guide on finding Subreddits which outlines the steps to take to find all relevant Subreddits and put them in a GummySearch Audience for easy research.

  5. Find and validate business ideas on Reddit

    — Pat Walls (@thepatwalls) February 17, 2022 Zapier solves this by providing thousands of ready-made connections between popular business apps. It's cost-effective, user-friendly, and reliable. It also happens to be a cool idea. Types of problems worth solving

  6. 11 real-world people' problems to solve from Reddit (digest #2)

    11 real-world people' problems to solve from Reddit (digest #2) by Serhii. Hi! In these digests, I collect problems people talk about on Reddit. They're mostly automation requests, but it's what people like you can simplify. Automation problems are my favorite ones because that's where people want to save their time, money, or other resources.

  7. How Entrepreneurs Can Find the Right Problem to Solve

    Identifying a customer's pain points is the first step for entrepreneurs in developing a new product. Julia Austin offers tips for choosing the right "job to be done." As an entrepreneur, how confident are you that you fully understand your customer's pain points or their job to be done?

  8. How To Successfully Identify Problems Worth Solving

    Test your solution by first measuring the waste. How many extra minutes do consumers spend on an activity? How many extra dollars do they inadvertently shell out? Once you know the amount of waste,...

  9. Finding A Problem to Solve

    Lesson time 06:49 min. Fundamentally, a good founder solves everyday problems. The challenge isn't coming up with a million-dollar idea. It's executing it. Alexis recommends carrying a notebook (a hard copy or digital app) to capture your ideas at a moment's notice. Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars.

  10. How to Identify the Right Problems to Solve

    Define the problem. Develop a thorough understanding of the issue by researching and talking to those affected by the problem. Then, create a shared digital space for discussion that centers the problem you're trying to solve. A great place to start is to use a template as your visual guide, like the Problem Tree Analysis template below.

  11. How to find problems to solve

    Friends & family in a professional field I almost always look for B2B problems when looking for pains to solve. I'm not interested in B2C (other than my desire to make a game someday). As long as you're listening and reading with intention, you'll find problems to solve. It's as simple as that.

  12. How Entrepreneurs Can Find the Right Problem to Solve

    If you've exhausted your network, expand it - the easiest way to find problems is just to listen. Scour online forums and question sites like Quora & Reddit. In our digital age, aside from telling your friends about your problems, the other go-to solution for help is to either ask for help on online forums or sites, or rant on them.

  13. How to Effectively Practice CP + Problem Solving Guide

    In short, mostly you only need to use codeforces (no matter what contest you're training for), find a rating range where you can solve around ~30-40% of the time on your own, and just grind down the problem set tab in reverse order of id (the default sorting). Also take part in every live contest you can, and virtual any live contests you miss.

  14. How do you find problems to solve?

    on August 2, 2023. Say something nice to lorenzotenti…. Learn new stuff = discover new problems. Meet people = learn new stuff = ⤴. Consulting/Agency Work. Look around for regulatory inefficiencies. 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 ...

  15. How Can I Find Problems to Solve (To Come Up With Business Ideas

    1) Start paying attention very deeply. In customer development, perhaps the biggest mistake that I made in the beginning was letting my assumptions take priority over my ears. Here's what I mean: I'd go into interactions with assumptions about who the person was, what they wanted, what they didn't want, and what their challenges and goals were.

  16. Solve

    Simplify Factor Expand Graph GCF LCM New Example Help Tutorial Solve an equation, inequality or a system. Example: 2x-1=y,2y+3=x What can QuickMath do? QuickMath will automatically answer the most common problems in algebra, equations and calculus faced by high-school and college students.

  17. All Recipes and Schematics and How to Get Them

    Recipes and Schematics share the same function in Nightingale. They are the blueprints that the player needs to buy to craft the building or the item that they want.

  18. How to Find Problems Worth Solving?

    How to Find Problems Worth Solving? - YouTube © 2023 Google LLC Entrepreneurship is problem solving. If you want to become an entrepreneur, the first step is to be a good problem solver....

  19. Gemini 1.5: Our next-generation model, now available for Private

    Posted by Jaclyn Konzelmann and Wiktor Gworek - Google Labs. Last week, we released Gemini 1.0 Ultra in Gemini Advanced. You can try it out now by signing up for a Gemini Advanced subscription.The 1.0 Ultra model, accessible via the Gemini API, has seen a lot of interest and continues to roll out to select developers and partners in Google AI Studio.

  20. AT&T Says Service Is Restored After Widespread Cellular Outage

    AT&T said on Thursday that it had fully restored service to its wireless network after a widespread outage temporarily cut off connections for users across the United States for many hours, the ...

  21. Poll Ranks Biden as 14th-Best President, With Trump Last

    President Biden may owe his place in the top third to his predecessor: Mr. Biden's signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Donald J. Trump from the Oval Office.

  22. How To Sell And Where To Get The Best Prices

    You can sell items at any vendor in Skull and Bones. At full ports like Sainte-Anne and Telok Penjarah, you can sell items at any of the various shops, like Commodity Vendor, Blacksmith, or Carpenter.

  23. Google to pause Gemini AI model's image generation

    "We're already working to address recent issues with Gemini's image generation feature," Google said in a post on X Thursday. "While we do this, we're going to pause the image ...

  24. SOS symbol appears on iPhones during AT&T outage: What is it?

    Thousands of customers woke up Thursday morning to an SOS symbol at the top of their iPhones and no service due to a nationwide telecommunications outage.. The outages were impacting AT&T ...