My journey in startups began 10 years ago, and I've launched 18 startups, most of which failed. Briefly on why they failed:
1. Contract Online my first startup in 2015, which was supposed to be an online service for remote signing of contracts for any transactions between individuals. A kind of analogue of a secure transaction. For this startup, I even managed to attract a business angel who invested $16,500.
Reason for failure: I had two lawyers on my team who discovered in the process that the legal framework at the time could not provide reliable grounds for protecting our users in remote transactions. The contracts would not have been considered legally signed.
2. Natural Products In 2015-2018, I became very passionate about healthy eating, but in the process, I discovered that products in all chain stores are full of chemicals, and stores with truly natural products are inaccessible to the majority. Hence, the idea emerged to create my own online platform where you could order natural products directly from farmers at affordable prices.
Reason for failure: For several years, I tried to launch this project, even trained as a baker of natural bread and tried to create my own farm, but in the process, I found that few people are willing to pay for truly natural products, even if these products were only 20-30% more expensive than market prices, and not 2-3 times more, as in premium stores. Hence, the market was so small that all my attempts were doomed.
What's the future of this product? What features are you going to innovate for monetization?
ProblemHunt
@egor_s_ Hi, my friend!
I'll try to answer briefly:
Regarding the future, I can't say for certain right now, but we are aiming to create an ecosystem for entrepreneurs and startups where they can find a startup idea, co-founders, and attract investment. That would be the ideal plan.
As for monetization, we currently have a number of hypotheses that we need to test. Therefore, I can't give a precise answer at the moment.
Thanks for your questions. 😊
ProblemHunt
@egor_s_ If you have any more questions, just write at any time — I'll be glad to answer them. 😊
That's a great idea with lots of potential. However, it seems like you're going to face another issue - how are you going to differentiate whether it's a huge and serious issue, and that it will be worth building something, or if it's a rather small issue, and it's just not worth building a solution, even if people try to convince you that they'd pay for it? Anyway, good luck!
ProblemHunt
@gone_quaility Hi! That's a great question, thank you! We're planning to conduct more in-depth interviews and find people with similar problems to talk to. Thank you so much for your support; we really appreciate it. Have a great day!
ProblemHunt
@gone_quaility Hi! 👋
These are very pertinent questions that we ourselves are looking to answer. But here, I would follow the principles taught by Paul Graham (founder of YC):
First, find at least one problem faced by a real person.
Create an MVP that can be used to validate this problem.
If this MVP (product) solves the problem and the user is genuinely happy, then look for others who are similar to this first user and offer them your solution.
However, in the future, we plan to validate problems more deeply. For example, by finding at least 10-20 more people who experience the same problem. Additionally, we will be able to assess the potential market size based on public and authoritative data.
Thank you for your support. 😊
@gone_quaility @gostroverhov I do think some way where people visiting the site can upvote certain problems or give an indication of relevance will help. I found myself relating to a few of the problems there but there wasn't an easy way to add my presence to the problem statement.
ProblemHunt
@sruti_ravi Thank you so much for your feedback and the idea! We are already working on this feature. We're almost there. 😊
@gostroverhov that's great to hear! I'll definitely be checking back in
just discovered ProblemHunt and love what you're building, we're solving the same fundamental problem from different angles.
i built frikt with the same belief: the best startup ideas come from real friction, not from brainstorming sessions. but where ProblemHunt goes deep (detailed problem submissions, builder-focused audience, equity incentives), frikt goes wide — one sentence, casual, anyone can post what's annoying them today.
the way i see it, frikt captures the raw signal and ProblemHunt validates it properly. maybe there's even a world where both exist in the same ecosystem.
congrats on 3rd place on Product Hunt — that's a real milestone.
This is pretty cool, looking forward to following your journey!
ProblemHunt
@theo_crewe_read Hi! Thank you very much for your support and kind words :)
Makers Page
Love the focus on real problems, Boris. Your story resonates, I’ve also built things no one needed. Manually hunting for pain points is hard but valuable. Curious how you qualify willingness to pay and segment by market size. Congrats on the launch!
ProblemHunt
@alexcloudstar Hi Alex! 👋
In a nutshell, here's the situation:
So far, the basics are simple. Our application form includes "tricky" questions that are quite effective at determining whether a person is truly ready to pay to solve their problem or not. Of course, this isn't a 100% guarantee, because people can genuinely "believe very strongly" that they are ready to pay. But it does a good job of filtering out the majority of those who aren't ready at all. Personally, I took 2 problems from ProblemHunt, created solutions for them, and then tested them on people actually experiencing those problems; the result: they paid.
The market is trickier at the moment. Frankly, sometimes there just isn't enough public and reliable data to assess the true market size. Therefore, if this data is available, the market is relatively easy to estimate and segment; if not, then unfortunately, the problem remains unassessed with many blind spots.
Hope that answers your questions. Thank you so much for your comment and support! 😊
ProblemHunt
@alexcloudstar Hi, thank you so much for your support. We appreciate it. Have a great day!
Zawa
Love this concept — solving problem discovery before product building is such an underrated step. Turning real user pain points into validated startup ideas could save founders months of wasted effort. Excited to see how ProblemHunt sources and vets these insights!
Ploito
Such an interesting idea. And no need to make a cust dev before:) Congrats on the launch!