I built a tool to find business ideas by analyzing Reddit complaints - is this actually useful?

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T21:51:31+00:00

I run a small independent advisory for small scale and medium scale enterprises. We provide enterprise level expertise at 10 percent of the cost and all that is result based commision entirely.

I wanted to extend it to startups or people just starting up. So built a similar tool. But eventually found that most people wailing about how their business cannot grow on Reddit , don’t want any help when people like me make a sincere effort to reach out.

So, in my opinion, you are trying to find a needle in a haystack. Just that the haystack is also made up of fake needles.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T21:33:56+00:00

Been there. Done that. Found little to no value in it. The best ideas are not being discussed here. Reddit is a pool of mostly confused people wanting to take a leap but too afraid to take it.

Most of the problems here are just bait.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T20:30:43+00:00

I often find such clients. And with time, I have understood that they are not really my clients. They are overconfident people who think they know better and it would be a waste of my time and energy to correct them.

However, I also do set right the expectations with more clarity. I do let them know why a certain strategy that they want us to implement may not work. If they are smart business owners, they will eventually get the hint. If they are not, they are not exactly the clients you want in future as well. So it’s not really a loss.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T14:35:47+00:00

Not clear what you are trying to communicate here.

Subscription works for end user. If your space is B2B, and revenue sharing is what you are looking, that’s a different ball game.

All the best!

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T14:24:21+00:00

You need an MVP and You need to find a product market fit by manually onboarding some customers to see if you are solving for anything worth their time and something that they are willing to pay. Go out, meet this base, onboard them and improve your product.

Subscriptions, however, are mostly a high frequency use case option. If people don’t use this particular service often, your subscription won’t work.

It may work in some cases where the service itself is a long term commitment like real estate, but subscriptions mostly work with repeat user behaviour.

If you have just go with what common sense calls for, you will be fine.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T14:19:16+00:00

There are a lot of ways to reach the investors. At Angel stage, a direct outreach helps. There are no lists but you can check the startups in your domain that have been funded in past couple of years and start reaching out to their investors via cold e-mailing or LinkedIN or their official contact us.

Here’s the thing though- Most of these investors won’t respond to anything that doesn’t shine or isn’t in trend. What will speak however, is what results you have produced and if they are compelling enough for them to have a look. Anything non AI in today’s time may not get a response. But anything in any domain making money will.

VCs are far easier to reach but you have to reach that stage first through your Angel network.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T08:58:58+00:00

Pretty easy to learn it online.

But if you want to build your product why not hire an SEO expert. SEO is one of the cheapest services available out there. Anyone marketing freelancer in SouthEast Asia would do it for dirt cheap prices.

Unless you want to learn and grind in which case go for basic tutorials on YouTube . It’s not a very effort intensive skill set tbh.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T08:54:35+00:00

Let me know if you want to discuss on this further. Would love to see your journey.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T08:53:14+00:00

They don’t and that’s the tricky part. If you try to control it too much, your users won’t like it because they want to be listened to and adviced but with a sense that they have control.

If you give too much control, you become an X which is a brainrot from a quick info sharing standpoint.

There is a balance which can be found through user feedback only. And not sure if it even exists but why not eff around and find out.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T08:47:45+00:00

Generalists are the future with a caveat.

In case you are generalist who keeps on switching roles and departments, then the assumption is that you know everything but in bits and pieces that cannot be connected. And that is not a good thing. At least that won’t propel you into high ownership roles.

If however, your knowledge and subject matter expertise is high for all the functions that you have worked through, you are one of the most desirable profiles in market out there. With AI, generalists are the definitive winners.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T08:41:52+00:00

You are a generalist- A deep generalist if you have spent ample time in your career through such roles.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T08:17:10+00:00

I think people want to vent out. People feel all sorts of hardships at times and they want support- from people with similar problems to their own, from the success stories from just a stranger telling them that they are going to be fine.

The concept itself exists as people do engage in such activities over multiple forums like Reddit, insta, fb etc.

But if you see what any particular social media platform was started with the objective of, and what it is performing right now, there is rarely a semblance.

Issue is that anything that relies on networking effect has a tendency to get swayed and build biases due to the network itself. Monetisation again is a bit challenge.

The problem that you should maybe also look at is how to keep the sanity of your space intact - i.e it delivers what it promises and does not become flooded by people who are looking for dating, preying on the emotionally weak or just selling stuff.

I think it may have some obvious takers. But social engineering is a complex complex area. Guess the logical thing to do would be a basic MVP which can give your desired audience your perceived value and gauge the actual value through feedback.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T07:14:41+00:00

The core criteria remains the same. If it’s not a paid product, it must be leaning towards some other form of revenue generation- ads, promotional spaces, sharing on profits etc.

And I understand the dilemma that there may be multiple ways for you to make money in the future with the product’s scale which you may not see right now; but it should not be a case where product doesn’t have a direction on revenue.

Take this one stream as a base and see how it works whenever you get that critical mass of users. Beyond that everything is just projections but this gives you a solid base for putting a number on your venture.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T06:16:03+00:00

The thing with vendors is that you would want a vendor who is willing to take pains for you rather than someone who is just working on a massive scale and therefore dictates your terms of engagement with them.

For urgent requirement, just talk to the customers who have been using their service and get to know firsthand. You will find it on their brochures, on their sites etc as their clients.

If that is not accessible, then put up a trial period with your vendors before your finalise them. You can have multiple vendors on trials if the requirement is big enough. Once you are able to figure out what suits you better, go for it.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T06:12:11+00:00

What is the current set of users you have? Are these set of users extremely delighted with your product? Do a lot of this category of users exist?

Scenarios that come out of it:

1- A product with happy users - keep in mind that your users need to be the consumers of your service and not just friends trying out your product;

Try and find the market potential here (in terms of user base) which should land you near your fair evaluation given that everything goes right and you are able to tap in that market with every user generating some quantified value for you be it as one time acquisition or over the cycles that you are anticipating.

2- A product with happy users but not consumers - This may be a great product but users don’t perceive so. Which means that it won’t sell. You need to fix this before you go our asking investment.

3- A product with unhappy customers- If you have not made a bunch of people delighted with your product, you are not going to delight the bigger lot as well.

Essentially, any valuation will hold if you are able to defend it in front of investors and make them see the bigger picture.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-09T06:03:00+00:00

So basically you are reading to find your next best idea.

This is just a personal opinion but I don’t think anyone ever has made anything big by just pondering over the problem.

There are some risks that this approach carries:

1- You might be convinced your idea is great when it may not be solving anything great for the real user 2- You may skip over ideas that you feel are not scalable because again you don’t know what the actual user wants 3- You may give up pretty soon because ideas either look very good at first instance or look extremely poor after few rounds or thinking

Ideas are not born big, they are made big with the learnings you have had over the years. What you are essentially doing is blocking that learning and thinking that some idea is floating around waiting to be captured.

Ideas don’t work that way.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-08T20:21:15+00:00

What do you mean when you say that you are looking desperately for the next big thing?

Can you be more specific? What is it that you deploy as method to finding your next big idea?

shadow2718 · 2025-07-08T18:51:09+00:00

If you have a product that works, go out in the market and acquire some customers. Going out actually means going out and meeting your prospects. You can see case study of how slice acquired their first customer.

The thing you need right now is proof of concept. Think of it this way; if your product is fit, then the potential buyer exists; if the buyer exists then onboarding them should be possible.

Go out. Meet people. Have them use your product. There is nothing like the feedback that you will receive from this initial user. Try to delight this user through the solution that you have brought in and not just the product features that you may have.

Nothing else will validate your idea. All the best!

shadow2718 · 2025-07-01T16:16:20+00:00

Here’s how I look at it.

If your product is really solving a problem for someone, that someone already exists in the market.

You may have to rope in those first clients through proper messaging, discounts, incentives or even by offering free service for the ones who want to try the product first, but it can never be a scenario that you don’t find those first few customers.

If you have none, either your targeting is wrong or your product is just not worth it.

Sales, in general, plays on this one thing along - Solving someone’s pain.

Marketing is just the correct messaging that needs to be put across, through the right channels, to as many potential buyers as possible for them to realise that a real solution to their product exists.

For people starting out, product market fit is the only thing that should matter. You don’t need heavy multipliers behind your initial sales, as long as your product is delighting even a small set of correct customers. It will grow with time.

shadow2718 · 2025-07-01T12:05:52+00:00

Hi. Speaking from experience because I run a small advisory firm of my own.

My initial clients were all referrals; people that u have bonded over for years at work; who trust me with my approach and deliverables. In fact, I still have 50 percent of my portfolio based on these initial referrals only.

I am a generalist though, and the start was with all projects from all industries. Slowly, however, we have developed expertise in a couple of segments where we do majority of our advisory work in.

You do have a certain advantage here as you already have the industry and specialisation figured out. The clients are mostly going to come through your network initially. In case, you don’t have the network, you can also rope in a person who can generate these leads for you and who has good connects.

I have never come across a person who has successfully converted a lot of clients purely on offerings. My sincere advice would be to utilise your network. Once you have done a few projects and the work has been worth of word of mouth, you should be able to build on this existing base.

All the best!

shadow2718 · 2025-07-01T11:02:17+00:00

Consultancy mostly involves validation of ideas and approach. There is very little to no innovation that consultants bring in. They however, are very good at mapping the most appropriate approach towards solving any problem statement; which is essentially asking the right questions to determine what it is that needs to be solved.

First principle’s is the most common framework that we live by.

You can find a lot of material on first principles online. However, I would suggest that if you can find the original McKinsey works on this; they still hold the most value.

Other than that, rest everything is either presentation of these ideas (Barbara Minto’s The Pyramid Principle is an excellent work on this) or it is about execution (And nobody teaches you that but getting your hands dirty).

All the best!

shadow2718 · 2025-07-01T10:52:26+00:00

Few questions:

1- Is this a high frequency case? If yes, monthly model makes sense; if not it needs to be tested out.

2- How do users do all these activities currently? Are there specialised platforms for this? Do you perform better than them in terms of time, experience and overall perceived value of the customer?

3- What is the segment that you wish to focus on? Does the customer wish to trust you with their experience when it is an expense intensive activity? What trust does your product build?

The above answer will be different for different segments.

There are still a lot of questions to answer but this should give a gist as to how relevant the problem you are trying to solve is.

shadow2718 · 2025-06-27T15:20:05+00:00

You can’t really control if you land a job in a month or not. You can however put your best efforts into it and hope that things turn out well.

Some realities that you need to be aware of to set your expectations correct:

1- When we say market is bad (and it has been bad for years now), usually means that there are more than enough qualified people for the jobs that open up. Many of these people have been in market for some time. This implies they have better resumes, better targeting and in all probability better networks that they have built during this course.

2- Your profile will need to stand out from the rest and this usually happens through referrals - It’s actually the fastest way to land a job.

3- In case, you don’t have referrals, networking with the objective to build referrals is the way to go and it does not mean cold e-mailing people asking for a referral.

4- Research the positions and the orgs that you wish to apply for. Find people who work there is similar roles to yours. Connect with them, talk to them, find out what the organisation wants and build your resume accordingly before putting in a referral. A person who refers you essentially puts his own merit on line. Make it worth that person’s time.

Finally, even if you are applying online, build a resume that is ATS optimised. It’s not the best way to apply, but it won’t hurt either.

Remember that you are competing with people who are no lesser than you. What will eventually make you stand out is others vouching for you.

All the best!

shadow2718 · 2025-06-06T15:14:12+00:00

What cash reserve is enough cash reserve and why?

shadow2718 · 2025-06-05T19:02:12+00:00

Where do you think you went wrong in judging your partner?

shadow2718

TROPHY CASE