As a developer and solopreneur, I’ve learned one hard truth: building something nobody wants is the fastest path to burnout and failure. Before writing a single line of code, I make sure the product I’m creating solves a real, urgent problem with clear demand. The goal is simple—ideate, execute, earn. My process starts with listening. I dive into communities like Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), and Hacker News, where real people vent their frustrations, share workarounds, and ask for help. These platforms are rich with unmet needs and pain points that often go unnoticed by traditional market research. I also scan freelance marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr to spot recurring tasks people are willing to pay for—those patterns are powerful signals of opportunity. If someone is repeatedly hiring others to do a job, there’s likely a way to automate it or turn it into a SaaS product. But here’s the challenge: these platforms are overwhelming. Thousands of posts, threads, and job listings flood in daily. Manually sifting through them is time-consuming and inefficient. That’s where AI comes in. I use AI tools like BigIdeasDB to cut through the noise. Instead of reading every post, I feed relevant keywords—like “time tracking,” “client onboarding,” or “content scheduling”—into the system. The AI scans thousands of conversations, identifies recurring themes, and surfaces the most pressing pain points backed by real user sentiment. It doesn’t just generate ideas—it validates them with evidence. The tool also helps with market research. I can ask it to analyze competitors, summarize their pricing models, and highlight gaps in their offerings. It surfaces underserved niches and tells me which features users are begging for but don’t yet exist. This approach has transformed how I ideate. Instead of guessing what people want, I’m building based on data. I no longer waste weeks on ideas that don’t resonate. Instead, I focus on problems that are both painful and common—exactly the kind of opportunities that can scale into million-dollar SaaS businesses. AI isn’t replacing my creativity—it’s amplifying it. It handles the heavy lifting of research, pattern recognition, and data synthesis, so I can spend more time thinking strategically, testing assumptions, and building solutions that truly matter. The result? Faster validation, smarter decisions, and a much higher chance of building something people actually pay for.