How to Find SaaS Ideas That Have Demand
Finding a SaaS idea is a research problem, not a creativity problem. Here is a process that works without needing inspiration to strike.
Last updated 2026-08-17
Start from the workaround, not the market
The single most reliable signal is somebody describing a manual workaround: a spreadsheet, a copy-paste routine, a person hired to do something mechanical. A workaround means the problem is painful enough to spend effort on, and that effort is your pricing anchor.
A repeatable loop
- Pick an industry you can plausibly reach — where you know people, or where they gather publicly
- Search complaint phrasing rather than category nouns
- Collect ten to twenty specific frictions, ignoring anything vague
- Group them; anything described by five or more unrelated people is worth a closer look
- Check what exists today and read that product's one and two-star reviews
- Talk to five people who have the problem before writing any code
What to discard
Discard complaints about price alone with no underlying workflow problem, bug reports with no workflow implication, and anything where the complainer is not the person who would pay.