How to Find Business Ideas in Everyday Frustrations

Workarounds are a huge clue

One of the best signs of an opportunity is when people are building their own messy solution.

Spreadsheets. Checklists. Manual processes. Hacks. Templates. Duct-taped combinations of tools. If you have ever “MacGyvered” something together to force a solution from several bad options, then you have already started to build a solution from frustration.

Whenever people are stitching together their own workaround, that usually means the existing options aren’t doing the job well enough.

That doesn’t automatically mean there’s a business there. But it’s a strong sign that something is missing.

Your frustration is a starting point—not proof

This is where it’s easy to go wrong.

You run into a problem, feel strongly about it, and assume everyone else must feel the same way. Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it definitely isn’t. It can be a trap, so don’t fall into it.

Instead, treat your frustration as a hypothesis, or the beginning of what could be a good idea that then turns into a business.

Instead of saying, “This should exist,” ask:

• Who else has this problem?
• How often do they run into it?
• What are they doing now instead?
• What’s frustrating about the current options?
• Would they actually pay for something better?

Sifting from why I have this frustration to whether others share it is the first step. It moves you from “I have an idea” to “I might have a market.”

Great idea sources are everywhere

So what if you can’t think of a frustration that you have? Or do you need inspiration? How do you find people’s frustration? Don’t worry, Its like when you buy a car and then see that make and model everywhere. Once you start looking for frustration, you’ll see it all over the place.

In customer reviews. In Reddit threads. In conversations with coworkers. In industry complaints. In your own routines.

A few especially good places to look:

• Customer reviewsRead the bad reviews in any category you’re curious about. People are surprisingly specific about what disappoints them.
• Online communitiesSearch for complaints, requests for alternatives, and “does anyone know a better way” conversations. Reddit is a great source for this.
• Your own workaroundsIf you’ve created a repeatable way to deal with a frustrating problem, that may be worth exploring.
• Industries you know wellIf you know a market from the inside, you’re more likely to spot broken processes that other people miss. This insider knowledge doesn’t have to come from your professional work (though it certainly can). Perhaps you love to ski and have become an expert downhill skier. There are certainly frustrations and problems you face if you ski all the time. Or maybe you love to bake on the weekends. What drives you crazy when you're baking?   

Not every problem is worth building around

Of course, some things are just mildly annoying.

A frustration becomes more interesting when it has a few of these traits:

• it happens often
• it affects a clear group of people
• current solutions are weak or awkward
• the problem costs people time, money, or stress
• people are already trying to solve it

That last one is especially important.

If people are already spending time or money to work around a problem, that’s a much better sign than a problem people barely notice.

A simple way to capture potential ideas

When you notice a frustration, don’t jump straight to building something.

Write down five things:

1. What’s the problem?
2. Who has it?
3. What are they doing now?
4. What’s wrong with those options?
5. What might a better solution look like?

That’s enough to turn a vague annoyance into something you can actually evaluate.

The goal isn’t to chase every idea

Once you start thinking this way, you’ll notice possible business ideas everywhere.

That’s useful. But it can also become a distraction.

The goal isn’t to act on every frustrating thing you notice. The goal is to get better at spotting the ones that might be worth validating.

Because the best business ideas usually don’t start with: What should I build?

They start with: What keeps going wrong for people, and why hasn’t anyone solved it well?

That’s a much better place to begin.

Spotted a good idea?

The next step is figuring out whether it actually holds up. See how LivePlan's Idea Canvas gives you more than a validation framework by stress testing your assumptions before you've committed.