Stop reading "100 startup ideas" listicles. Start with 1,000 pain points that already have paying users and broken tools.
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Most "startup idea" lists are vibes. Bullet points, no audience, no numbers, no sources. idea-box is the opposite. Every entry answers six questions a serious builder actually asks:
- Who hurts? (the specific role β not "small businesses")
- How badly? (pain severity, how often it happens, what breaks)
- How many of them are there? (firm counts, industry labor spend)
- What are they paying today? (the pricing at incumbent SaaS tools)
- Why don't today's tools fix it? (the concrete gap)
- Why is now a good time to build? (what infra or rule change made it possible)
Top candidates are then run through a deeper investor-grade check β market sizing triangulated three ways, unit economics, an 8-factor score, and a "what would have to be true" risk list.
PAIN-0001 β Phone/device repair shop: fragmented quote-to-invoice lifecycle
- Who hurts Β· 1β5 technician repair-shop owner
- What breaks Β· Customer texts asking for an iPhone screen price. Owner manually checks stock in a spreadsheet, quotes via SMS, writes the booking in Google Calendar, logs it in the POS. Nothing is connected β parts get oversold, bookings get missed, everything is re-keyed.
- How big Β· ~150,000 shops in North America alone
- What they pay now Β· ~$200/month to RepairShopr, RepairDesk, or MyGadgetRepairs
- Why incumbents miss it Β· Rigid software, no native WhatsApp/SMS agent, no stock-aware intake, weak omnichannel
- Why now Β· WhatsApp Business API is cheap, LLM voice costs crashed, SMBs expect conversational tools
- Sources Β· Rossmann Forum thread on shop software Β· CellSmart POS review roundup
- Signal strength Β· 9/10 severity Β· 9/10 tedium Β· score 92/100
That's what every one of the 1,000 entries gives you. Not a slogan. Not a vibe.
| If you are⦠| You'll use this to⦠|
|---|---|
| A founder hunting for an idea | Skip the vibes lists. Go straight to problems with named customers + known price points. |
| A VC or angel investor | Pre-triage decks. If the problem isn't in here β or it is but the listed incumbents already solved it β that's a signal. |
| A product leader at a scaling company | Find the 3 adjacent problems your customers have that you could wrap into a new SKU. |
| A vertical-AI builder | Map labor budgets to agent workflows. Every entry tags a workflow family (7 of them cover most of B2B). |
| A researcher or PMM | The highest-density dataset anywhere on where unsolved operational pain maps to buyable software. |
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Grouped by the kind of builder who'd care:
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Each of the 50 highest-scoring entries is run through the AI-cofounder 8-factor rubric. You get: Market sizing, triangulated 3 ways
Unit economics stub in SaaS / marketplace / D2C / fintech shapes
8-layer score (1β5 each)
Top 3 riskiest assumptions β the "what would have to be true" list Verdict
Zero-build. Single HTML file. Filter by vertical, workflow family, severity, willingness-to-pay direction, and validation verdict. Try it β
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Every entry in data/pains-*.json has these fields. Plain English only: what it means and why it matters.
| Field | What it means | Why a builder cares |
|---|---|---|
id |
Permanent ID like PAIN-0001 |
Stable reference across versions |
title |
One-line pain in human language | The hook |
vertical |
Industry label (for example: "Device Repair", "Veterinary") | Filters out what you don't want to build in |
workflow_family |
One of 7 kinds of operational work | Maps to the kind of agent you would build |
persona |
The specific buyer role, not a category | You have to know who you are calling |
pain_description |
What breaks, in the persona's words | The narrative that sells your pitch |
pain_severity |
1 to 10, how painful | 10 means losing money or triggering regulatory risk |
tedium_score |
1 to 10, how repetitive the task is | 10 is pure copy-paste data entry, prime AI replacement |
frequency |
How often the pain happens | "Daily per shop" signals volume pricing |
tam_firms |
Estimated count of target companies | Used for bottom-up market sizing |
tam_labor_spend_usd |
Annual labor cost across this market, in US dollars | Frames the pain as a labor-budget opportunity, not an IT-budget one (Menlo Ventures framing) |
tam_direction |
Growing, stable, or shrinking | Tells you whether you are surfing or swimming |
current_wtp_usd_month |
What customers pay today to existing tools, per month in US dollars | Anchors your pricing ceiling |
incumbent_tools |
Tools and SaaS products already serving this pain | Your competition |
incumbent_gap |
Why today's tools fail these customers | Your wedge |
santifer_pattern |
One-line solution sketch | Starting point, not a spec |
sources |
Reddit threads, forums, reviews | Evidence, not opinion |
verbatim_quotes |
Real user complaints pulled from those threads, quoted as written, with author handle and date | Someone's actual words, not your paraphrase |
reference_build |
URL of an existing working example of this solution pattern, if one exists | Proof it can be done |
why_now |
What changed recently that makes this buildable | The catalyst for today |
opportunity_score |
Composite score from 0 to 100 | Sort on this, then read the details |
Extra evidence that lets you decide whether to actually build. Every field is designed to answer one of four jobs: can I validate this, can I catch the trend early, can I avoid wasting 3 months, and can I reach $50,000 in monthly revenue?
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
specific_prospects |
Named people, companies, subreddits, Facebook groups, and associations you could contact today. For each: name, type, URL, how big, and how to reach them. |
velocity_signal |
Is the pain growing, flat, or cooling? Includes concrete evidence (numbers, dates), the trigger (new API, regulation, cost drop), and your estimated head start before mass competition. |
buying_intent_evidence |
Quotes where someone signals they actively want to pay. Typed as: asking for a recommendation, actively comparing tools, said they will pay, switching away from their current tool, signed up for a waitlist, or funding raised in the category. |
kill_risks |
3 to 5 things that could kill this idea, each tagged kill / serious / manageable with current status. |
fermi_math_to_50k |
Arithmetic path to $50,000 in monthly revenue: realistic year-1 reach, signup rate, monthly price, customers needed, months, and verdict (math works / tight but possible / math does not work). |
Some fields keep shorthand in their JSON names for backward compatibility, but the browser UI always shows plain English:
tam_firmsshows as "Target companies"tam_labor_spend_usdshows as "Annual labor cost in this market"tam_directionshows as "Market trend"current_wtp_usd_monthshows as "What they pay today"
Live: mothivenkatesh.github.io/idea-box/web/
Prefer local:
git clone https://github.com/mothivenkatesh/idea-box.git
cd idea-box
python -m http.server 8000
# open http://localhost:8000/web/# Top 10 India-specific opportunities
jq '[.[] | select(.vertical | test("Bharat"))] | sort_by(-.opportunity_score) | .[0:10] | map({id, title, persona})' \
data/pains-03-bharat-india.json
# All deep-validated "Conditional pass" candidates
jq '.[] | select(.ai_cofounder_validation.verdict == "Conditional pass") | .title' \
data/validations-s-tier.json
# Count entries by workflow family across the whole corpus
jq -s 'add | group_by(.workflow_family) | map({family: .[0].workflow_family, count: length})' \
data/pains-*.jsonimport json, glob
pains = []
for f in sorted(glob.glob("data/pains-*.json")):
pains.extend(json.load(open(f, encoding="utf-8")))
# SMB opportunities where target already pays >= $200/month today
opps = sorted(
[p for p in pains
if (p.get("current_wtp_usd_month") or 0) >= 200
and "smb" in p.get("tags", [])],
key=lambda p: -(p.get("opportunity_score") or 0)
)[:20]Synthesized from β and cross-checked against β sources that compound credibility:
- Santifer's Business OS case study β 16 years of running a real repair shop, 170 hours/month of operator time saved with the pattern. Applied in 200+ entries.
- a16z's vertical-AI + vertical-SaaS thesis β the industry-labor-spend framing
- Menlo Ventures β Software Finally Gets to Work β $740B healthcare admin vs $63B IT
- Lyzr AI β 101 enterprise use cases + Sierra + Nurix AI β what's actually shipping at enterprise today
- ideabrowser.com (Greg Isenberg) + painonsocial.com β the "structured idea card" format
- BigIdeasDB β 238K real complaints across Reddit, G2, Capterra, Upwork analyzed
- Direct Reddit reading β r/smallbusiness, r/Entrepreneur, r/accounting, r/nocode, r/Airtable, r/HVAC, r/realtors, r/medicine, r/sysadmin, r/construction, and ~20 more
- G2 and Capterra 2-star review patterns (gaps hide here)
- NAICS labor-spend data for market-sizing triangulation
- Santifer β the repair-shop pattern that proves the "Airtable + automation + AI agent" bundle works for SMBs
- Greg Isenberg's ideabrowser β the card-per-idea discipline
- painonsocial.com β Reddit-mined pain-point scoring
- BigIdeasDB β the 238K-complaint validation approach
- Frappe's Espresso design system β styling for the browser UI
If you found this through any of them, go β them too.
- v1.0 β 1,000 entries, top 50 deep-validated, live browser
- v1.1 β
verbatim_quotesfield on the schema, real quotes seeded for the 50 S-tier entries, empty slots on the other 950 for community fill-in - v1.2 β open contributions via PR + issue templates
- v1.3 β deep-validation expanded to top 100
- v2.0 β automated pipeline: nightly Reddit pull β candidate entries β human review
PRs welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md. The highest-leverage contributions:
- Add a source link to an existing entry β a Reddit thread, G2 review, or forum post that validates the pain
- Fill in missing firm counts or labor-spend estimates from NAICS or industry reports
- Flag duplicates β open an issue if you find two entries describing the same pain
- Submit a new entry via the issue template
β Star the repo Β Β·Β π Open an issue Β Β·Β π Share
MIT-licensed. Built by @mothivenkatesh with the help of Claude Code.