I know it isn't just me because I have a number of LCNC friends who, like me, won't even open Stripe before first opening ChatGPT or something similar to guide me through the maze that is Stripe.
Here's me, having just downloaded Claude Cowork, really doubtful that it is going to make any difference with the seven stuck projects I have in Stripe...

1. Global problem: Dating apps fail for complex lives (illness, relocation, unfulfilled youth). A platform is needed for matching based on life path compatibility.

2. Daily routine: after every client meeting, I need to write a structured report for colleagues. Existing corporate tools (Microsoft 365) are inefficient and slow for this.

3. A startup founder loses focus and productivity juggling 5-7 tools for a single project. Existing all-in-one platforms don't provide the feel of a unified workspace.

4. An African entrepreneur cannot accept international payments on Shopify. PayPal blocks, Stripe is unavailable. There is no payment gateway that does not discriminate based on geography.

5. Micro-influencer cannot monetize a loyal audience: there is no safe and effective platform for deals with small brands and those willing to work with small influencers in India.

After four long years of grinding, building, fundraising, and hiring, we decided to pivot. I wanted to write down my thought process and timeline because I wish I d seen more honest pivot stories when we were stuck. Not just we pivoted and everything was instantly great but the real version where we kept trying to make the original idea work for way too long because we already put so much into it.

I went through YC S20 (the first COVID batch) as a solo founder working on @Basedash. After YC, I did what you re supposed to do. I talked to users. I built product. I did founder-led sales. I hired a great team. It felt like progress because I was constantly busy and the product kept getting better.

As usual, Y Combinator came up with segments that are worth investing:

1. Cursor for Product Managers
2. AI-Native Hedge Funds
3. AI-Native Agencies
4. Stablecoin Financial Services
5. AI for Government
6. Modern Metal Mills
7. AI Guidance for Physical Work 8. Large Spatial Models 9. Infra for Government Fraud Hunters 10. Make LLMs Easy to Train

1. Guys, I ve been noticing more and more often in the comments something along these lines: This problem was solved many years ago, here s a solution I found on Google in 1 minute .

2. Yes, most often, a problem you see on ProblemHunt at first glance seems to be already solved. And I fell into this trap myself. For example, for one of the problems on PH that I wanted to solve, I found at least three solutions in my search, one of which was created as much as 4 years ago. BUT after a call with the person experiencing the problem, it turned out that the existing products solved it at most 20 30%, and a lot still needed to be improved.

1. A 3-year search for a simple tool to track both personal and business finances in one place. Nothing fits.

2. Website owners constantly need minor edits in the admin panel. They are forced to pay specialists for 5-minute tasks. We need an AI agent that does this on command in the browser.

3. An indie hacker spends 20-30 hours manually cold launching each new product in directories, Reddit, and blogs. There is no tool that fully automates this and proves its effectiveness.

4. A freelancer often loses in proposal competitions due to the inability to quickly create personalized and visual website concepts for each job order.

5. A Telegram channel owner is losing their audience without understanding the reasons for unsubscriptions. There is no simple tool for automatically collecting feedback from departed subscribers.

Guys, a couple of hours ago, the author of this problem, which he published on ProblemHunt about four months ago, wrote. Here is the essence of his message:

 Hello! We've partnered with one of the market leaders in our segment. We had negotiations today we're integrating into their ecosystem for mutual growth and development. Soon our solution will be available to their audience. We did it! 

This isn't a unicorn story. Rather, it's an example of a sustainable micro-SaaS for a niche audience and a local market. Although who knows?

It s almost here for me. In three days, I ll be relaunching a major update for the app I have been collaborating with, and I ve set clear boundaries for myself about what I will and won t do before the launch. I guess these are some general, unwritten rules I try to follow

Definitely DON T:

• Accept offers from charlatans promising votes or engagement for money

• Send unsolicited messages begging for votes or support

• Spam other people s posts with launch announcements

I came to exactly the same conclusion that real startup ideas often come from simple and boring problems. From my own experience: I spent three years on a startup that was supposed to revolutionize online education, but in the end it had 0 users. Now I ve just started solving a simple problem for home appliance repair technicians and immediately got my first paying users on a very rough MVP.

It would seem that this problem is an ancient one, but it still has not been properly resolved. Given that attention span in people is truly gaining serious momentum, a solution to this problem could come in very handy.

Many people were looking for an answer in one category, namely, Forums Streaks.

This metric by itself only tells you that people log in to the app.

1. Need an AI Jarvis that turns chaotic voice/text updates into automatically structured tasks, projects, and dashboards for managing all of life and work.

2. Hours of manual searching for parts for Chinese cars. Need an AI agent that understands queries from photos or text and finds the part.

3. Online clothes shopping is a lottery. There's no accessible technology to see how an item will fit your body, especially in small stores. It's a pain for the buyer and a loss for the seller.

4. A musician from Lebanon cannot sell his music: streaming pays pennies, and Bandcamp doesn't accept payments in his country. Needs a fair radio-platform with direct sales.

5. VPN users have nowhere to find out if a service will work reliably on their network there is no up-to-date rating based on real-time quality monitoring.

6. It's impossible to order truly fresh farm vegetables and bread through delivery aggregators product quality is low, and you have to go to the market yourself.

1. The lack of a service that creates hyper-personalized, gamified English courses (in the Duolingo format) for narrow professional niches (e.g., for a barista in a vegan coffee shop or a startup founder.

2. Automating cross-posting of an indie hacker's technical content across multiple platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, Product Hunt) while adhering to each platform's best practices.

Over the past month, I've been scrolling through several LinkedIn profiles and noticed how some people have long portfolios of businesses that say:

Founder

Founder

1. No way for city residents to order delivery from local stores to their elderly relatives in remote villages.

2. It's difficult for parents of newborns in India to organize vaccination: there is no service for easy doctor search and a turnkey process provision.

3. Solar installation companies lack a platform for end-to-end tracking of a customer's project from sale to official approval, causing complaints and dissatisfaction.

1. Startup founders get lost in legal, accounting, and administrative tasks after incorporation, leading to stress and risks due to the lack of a clear, step-by-step plan.

2. The owner of a relaunched bar on the French coast cannot attract an audience in the evening due to the legacy of its past format (nightclub) and its isolated location.

1. Recently, several small bloggers have talked about ProblemHunt: a few from the USA, a few from Spain, and one from France. And we noticed an obvious thing: traffic from these countries, although not much, has started to grow.

2. But the most important thing is that people from these countries have started sharing problems more actively. For example, in the last month alone, France has already submitted 4 problems, three of which were published yesterday and today.

1. Problem Breakdown from the Moderator:

A detailed description of a systemic pain point in the B2B segment has come to ProblemHunt. This is not a classic user request but rather an analysis from a consultant. We can't publish it as a standard problem, but it's too profound to ignore. Let's examine it as a case study. Before publication, all unnecessary information was removed while preserving the important details and essence.

Guys, a new problem from the USA has been posted. However, according to our observations, two very similar problems from other countries and by different authors have already been published on ProblemHunt. We recommend paying attention to this.