Validate your startup idea with evidence, not optimism
Pull the threads where your future customers already complain, compare tools, and ask for help — then get a ranked report of where the real pain and willingness to pay live.
The problem
Most ideas die because they solve a problem nobody is paid to care about. Surveys flatter you, friends are polite, and "I would totally use that" never converts.
Reddit is the opposite: thousands of unfiltered threads where people describe what actually frustrates them, what they have tried, and what they would gladly pay to fix.
The catch is volume. Reading it by hand is hopeless, and a single cherry-picked thread proves nothing. You need the signal across the whole conversation.
How it works
- 1
State the claim
Write your idea as a testable hypothesis — e.g. "indie founders struggle to get their first 100 customers."
- 2
Pull the threads
We search the subreddits where that audience lives and gather the discussions that match, comments and all.
- 3
AI classifies each one
Every thread is scored for pain intensity, willingness to pay, and the workarounds people already use.
- 4
Read the ranked report
A single markdown report ranks the strongest demand signals so you know whether to build — or pivot.
What the report looks like
Every matching thread is scored 0–100 for pain intensity and bucketed into a willingness-to-pay tier, then sorted so the strongest demand sits at the top.
Illustrative example
A representative run — not a measured result — to show the shape of the output.
“Indie founders struggle to get their first 100 customers.”
A representative run surfaces a tight cluster of high-pain threads about cold-start distribution, with several posters naming the exact tools they already pay for to escape it.
Takeaway. Demand for a fix reads as real and acute — so the open question becomes price, not whether the pain exists.
Why it works
Demand before development
Find out if the pain is real and acute enough to pay for, before you spend a month building.
Pricing signals
See where people already pay for alternatives and how they describe "worth it" versus "too expensive."
Your competitors, named
Discover which tools your future customers already reach for — and exactly where those tools let them down.
Language that converts
Capture the precise phrasing your audience uses so your landing page sounds like their own words.
Under the hood
Scored, not skimmed
Each thread gets a pain_signal (0–100) and a wtp_tier of high / medium / low / none, so you rank by intensity instead of by upvotes.
What a run costs
A typical pass classifies ~250–300 threads for roughly $0.13–0.40 and finishes in 10–15 minutes.
No API-lockout risk
Threads come from Reddit’s public JSON endpoints — no OAuth, no key, and resilient to the API changes that have killed other tools.
Frequently asked questions
How is this better than a survey?
Surveys capture stated preference from people trying to be helpful. Reddit captures revealed frustration from people who had no idea you were listening — a far stronger demand signal.
Do I need to know which subreddits to search?
No. You start from a plain-English claim and the tool suggests relevant subreddits and search queries, which you can edit before running.
How long does a run take?
A full pass over a claim typically completes in a few minutes, and the resulting report is yours to keep and re-run as the conversation evolves.
What does the output look like?
A ranked report of threads scored for pain and willingness to pay, with links back to the original discussions so you can read the raw evidence.
Can I test more than one idea?
Yes. Each idea is its own claim, so you can run several in parallel and compare which has the strongest underlying demand.
Keep reading
Find the pain points your customers never put in a ticket
Surface the frustrations customers vent everywhere except your inbox.
Read →Map the landscape before you bet on a direction
Map an entire space before you commit to a direction.
Read →Reddit research: using Reddit as a serious research source
A founder spends a weekend reading 300 threads in three subreddits and walks away knowing exactly how customers describe their problem. This is the guide to doing that on purpose, without fooling yourself.
Read →Reddit market research: reading a market in its own words
A founder spends six weeks and a chunk of budget on a survey, then learns more from one afternoon reading a niche subreddit. This is how to do Reddit market research on purpose instead of by accident.
Read →How we score a thread for pain and willingness to pay
The exact schema that turns a messy Reddit thread into a rankable pain and willingness-to-pay score.
Read →Methodology
Exactly how a claim becomes a ranked, sourced report.
Read →