What Pain-Point are you Solving and How did you discover it?

Great question. Bracework started exactly the way you described ... not with a vision deck, but with irritation.

How I uncovered the problem

I spent a lot of time around owner-operators in field service and home trades (plumbing, HVAC, electrical), when I worked for a markerting agency, as marketing consultant, serving this ICP. Same pattern every time: the work itself was skilled and valuable, but the paperwork was chaos. Notes scribbled on paper, photos scattered across phones, voice memos half-forgotten, invoices delayed or missing details. The real pain wasn’t “software is bad,” it was billable work leaking through cracks.

Signals it was worth solving

Three strong signals:

1. People complained about it unprompted. (and sometime, we do as well as clients)

2. They had already hacked together ugly workarounds (WhatsApp threads, camera rolls, Notes app, spreadsheets).

3. They accepted the pain as “part of the job,” which usually means the problem is real but underserved.

How I validated willingness to pay

I didn’t start with surveys. I started by showing rough outputs.

“Here’s what your messy photos + voice notes could turn into.”

When tradespeople said, “If it did that, I’d use it tomorrow” ... that was the green light. Pricing conversations came early, and interestingly, speed and reliability mattered more than features.

Did the product evolve?

Yes... not much.. but the core stayed the same.

Originally it was about “AI paperwork.” It evolved into something more precise: turning job evidence into clean, professional documents without changing how field service pro and home businesses already work. No portals for clients, no extra admin steps. Just capture → structure → copy-paste and move on.

What surprised me most

How allergic people are to new workflows.

The best product wasn’t the smartest one... it was the one that stayed invisible and respected the reality of being on a job site.

If anyone here is working on tools for non-desk workers, my biggest takeaway is this:

Don’t ask them to adapt to your product. Adapt your product to the mess they already live in.

For anyone curious, I’m building bracework.io an AI assistant that turns job photos, voice notes, and texts into estimates, change orders, and invoices in seconds. Still early, still learning, but very much born from real-world friction.

Happy to swap notes with anyone building in similar trenches.

I am more in the role of a researcher here, and that very customer whose pain points you are trying to solve 😅 From my work experience, the best products always come out of boring routine. There was a case where a founder noticed we were spending three hours reconciling spreadsheets and simply automated it. It is always interesting to watch how products evolve when they collide with real corporate processes.

Would love to read stories in the comments!

Let me tell you a story.

Before building Supaboard my co-founder and I were building software for other startups and small businesses, while simultaneously trying to come up with a problem statement on which we could build our own startup.
During this tenure we noticed a pattern, once a product hit market, almost immediately the stakeholders required some sort of introspection into the data the product and the business as a whole is generating.

But maybe when you live too close too a problem, you often fail to see it- For us, our clients asking to run queries to extract key performance metrics on a daily basis seemed like a chore we simply didn't like doing. I mean we were builders not reporters, right.

So we built a very rudimentary solution that used ChatGPT3.5 (remember that old relic that flabbergasted us all?) to come up with the answers to our clients' questions in form of simple Tables and KPIs and often less than reliable "insights".

We literally had to be pointed out by our then clients to create a comprehensive solution out of it. I know, it sounds borderline gross-negligence on our part to not have seen the potential of our nascent "product"; but maybe that's what happens when you live too close to the problem- you fail to see the bigger picture.

And now, three years and countless sacrifices from friends, families, and colleagues, later we have a product and a humble vision that is believed by everyone who is working on Supaboard. Not gonna lie, it feels both blessed and scary at time.

But I guess that's what it takes to be an entrepreneur, a founder, a builder.

PS: I know, this bit is less about solving the problem but more about personal and professional endeavors. But @jake_friedberg this, pretty much sums it up, at least for me.

I discovered the problem for @stagecaptions.io while attending conferences and virtual events and noticing three recurring frustrations:

• Poor audio quality - even in professional setups, it’s often hard to hear speakers clearly.

• Accessibility gaps -people with hearing difficulties struggle to follow along because captions are either missing or low quality.

• Accented speech - many speakers have accents that are hard to understand for parts of the audience, creating additional comprehension barriers.

To validate, we real-world tested StageCaptions at the PFMM medical conference in Vilnius. We asked attendees and organizers about the captions, and the feedback was really positive. People liked the idea of having live captions at different events, and it was clear there’s a real need for it.

The product has always stayed true to the original idea: making conferences easier to follow for everyone, no matter the audio quality, hearing ability, or speaker accent.

With One Pager, the idea started from a personal frustration. I was constantly being cold-approached by vendors, and almost all of it felt impersonal, especially when many of the products were nearly identical. I found myself wishing for more genuine business relationships, where I could trust the people behind the product rather than feeling like I was using something I wasn’t sure was being thoughtfully maintained or built by a team I could stand behind.

What really sparked the idea was a single salesperson who reached out with a simple video message and a clean, personalized landing page they’d created themselves as part of a design agency. That small amount of effort immediately set them apart. It showed attentiveness and care and as a result, I ended up working with them on a previous project.

I did some early validation by talking with people locally, but honestly, that experience alone was validation enough for me. If that approach resonated so strongly with me, I believed it would resonate with others too.

What’s surprised me most along the way is just how many people feel the same. So many want better, more human relationships with their customers, but aren’t quite sure how to make that happen. That’s exactly the problem One Pager is aiming to solve.

I have experienced toxic workplace environments that led to depression, stagnation, and a constant sense of instability. In my most recent role, I was subjected to excessive surveillance—cameras were installed facing our desks, my manager routinely reviewed my laptop’s browser history, and frequently questioned my Slack activity. This level of monitoring created an atmosphere of fear and mistrust.

These experiences are not isolated; they reflect patterns I have observed and heard about over many years. While most organizations acknowledge that “culture” matters for business success, it remains difficult to measure and address in practice. Too often, HR departments fail to operate as true strategic partners. Looking ahead, I see two possible paths over the next five years: either HR functions will be replaced by AI, or they will evolve to genuinely support organizations through , people-centered strategies.

The pain is universal and meaningful but hard to tackle as well ;)

To answer your questions: I'm working on a personal finance app — my first app ever — basically because it's the tool I would have wanted when I was in dire straits. The core idea is simple: instead of drowning in budget categories, you get one number each day. And now, thanks to AI, I'm actually able to build it vibe coder style.

I'm pretty sure people are willing to pay, because there are already profitable apps out there — but most of them are built for people who already love spreadsheets. I wanted to build for the 90% who don't.

It has definitely evolved into something bigger than I planned, with a share system and other features. That wasn't in the original plan at all. I've had to keep myself in check though, in order to keep focus.

The most surprising part? The ease of implementing new ideas. Even though a lot of features were built and ultimately scrapped, there's always something you learn. And I'm amazed at how good a tutor AI can be — I'd like to think I learned more in three months than I would have otherwise in five years.

If I were to start over, I'd experiment sooner instead of trying to perfect a core issue. But other than that it's been a terrific ride, really.