Did you know Notion almost didn't exist?

Notion (my favourite productivity tool) didn’t start by building a workspace app.

They were up against players like Evernote which already had millions of users, huge funding and revenue. It was the dominant player. But they weren't listening to this specific problem their users kept screaming about.

Ivan recalls noticing that “productivity nerds … hacked together clumsy systems on Evernote, Trello, Docs and spreadsheets” to manage workflows.

Notion listened. Built exactly what people were begging for. Today they're worth $10 billion.

The lesson? Your competitors' users are telling you exactly what problems need solving. You just need to tune in to their frequency. You’ve got to listen.

Competitor users aren’t just complaining—they’re signalling gaps in the market. If you tune in, understand the hacks they’ve built, and offer them a polished all‑in‑one alternative, you’ve found your market wedge.

Let’s get started:

Why the AI Tool Graveyard Exists

Go to any AI directory. Thousands of "cool" tools. Most with under 100 users.

They're not bad tools. They're solutions looking for problems. The founders thought "This would be cool to build" instead of "This solves a painful problem."

Cool doesn't pay bills. Solving problems does.

Every successful business follows this formula:

• Person has specific problem

• Problem causes measurable pain (time, money, frustration)

• Business removes that specific pain

• Person pays to keep pain away

Skip step one, and you're building for customers who do not exist.

So…how to avoid this?

The Audience Advantage

If you have an audience, validation is simple. Ask them. Survey them. Test with them. They'll tell you exactly what problems they'll pay to solve.

But you're 12 days in. Your audience is still growing. So we tap into other people's audiences - specifically, your competitors' users who are already vocal about their problems.

In Week 1, we found competitors to validate market demand. Now we're going deeper - not just "what features are missing" but "what problems are making people angry enough to complain publicly."

This is completely different from Week 1's competitor analysis. That was about market gaps. This is about human pain.

You are a customer problem researcher specialising in finding urgent, expensive problems that people actively complain about. This is NOT about competitor features - it's about user pain.

My niche: [Your niche from Week 1]
Week 1 competitors found: [List them]

Your task:
1. Search for discussions where users of these tools express PROBLEMS and FRUSTRATIONS
2. Look for emotional language that indicates real pain
3. Find problems mentioned repeatedly across multiple sources

Focus on finding:
- Specific tasks that waste time ("spend hours every week...")
- Workflows that break or fail ("always crashes when...")
- Missing capabilities that cost money ("have to hire someone to...")
- Frustrations that people work around ("I jury-rigged a solution...")

For each problem, document:
- Exact user quotes (with source)
- Current workarounds people use
- Language that shows pain level ("drives me crazy", "biggest headache")
- Any mention of time/money impact

Look in:
- Recent reviews (2-4 stars)
- Support forums and help communities
- Reddit threads about the tools
- Twitter complaints
- YouTube comments on tutorials

IGNORE:
- Feature wishlists
- UI preferences
- Vague complaints
- One-off edge cases

Categorize problems by:
- Urgent daily pains (need solving NOW)
- Expensive problems (costing significant time/money)
- Workflow blockers (preventing important work)

Give me real human problems, not competitor analysis.

Run this with Manus or your preferred AI research tool. It will go off and trawl the internet for profitable problems for you. This is by the way one of the most powerful uses of an AI agent - doing this grunt work used to take forever!

Real Problems vs Feature Requests

Remember that a massive difference between "It would be nice if..." and "This drives me absolutely crazy every single day." Use this in your judgement when looking at what your AI turns up.

Real Problems:

• "I waste 2 hours every Monday copying data between these systems"

• "Lost a client because I missed this in the workflow"

• "Have to pay my assistant £500/month just to handle this"

• "The worst part of my job is dealing with..."

Feature Requests:

• "Would be cool if it had dark mode"

• "Wish it integrated with [obscure tool]"

• "Could use better fonts"

• "Needs more customisation options"

Dark Mode doesn’t pay the bills. Chase problems that cause measurable pain. Those are the ones people pay to solve.

Your Day 12 Deliverable

By end of today:

1. Run the problem research prompt for your niche

2. Document 10 specific problems with user quotes

3. Rank by pain level (how much it costs in time/money)

No feature lists. No "nice to haves." Just real problems that real people lose real time or money to.

Right now, someone is typing an angry review about your competitor. They're frustrated. They're looking for alternatives. They might even have their credit card out.

Tomorrow, we'll turn these validated problems into simple, buildable MVP concepts. One input, one AI process, one output. Solving one problem brilliantly.

But today? Today you're gathering intelligence about problems so painful that people will pay to make them go away.

Build in Public Component

Share your problem discoveries:

"Day 12 of AI Summer Camp: just found what makes [market] users rage.

'[Exact quote about problem]' - seen this 20+ times

'[Another painful quote]' - this costs them hours weekly

My competitors' users are screaming about their problems. So… looks like it’s time for me to build solutions."

What's Next?

Tomorrow, we take these problems and design simple AI solutions. No complexity. No feature lists. Just problem → solution → payment. The problems you find today become the products you build next week.

But first: the problems! Get to it!