Most founders treat product development like a creative brainstorm. They sit in a room and try to manifest a "disruptive" idea out of thin air.
If you want to build something people actually pay for in 2026, you need to stop looking for inspiration. You should start looking for friction instead. Here is how to reverse-engineer a technical channel like Hacker News or Reddit to find your next hit.
1. Find the Digital Venting Rooms
People do not go to Hacker News or Reddit to talk about what they love. They go there to complain. These complaints are effectively unbuilt feature requests.
To find them, look for Ask HN threads or specific subreddits where the prompt is a question about a painful process.
Search queries to try:
- Ask HN: What is the most frustrating part of [Industry]?
- Why is [Popular Tool] so bad at [Specific Task]?
- Is it just me or is [Common Process] getting worse?
2. Identify the Repeat Offenders
Look for the recurring themes. Engineers were tired of being lied to about work-life balance. They were annoyed by vague culture statements. These were not just opinions. They were data points.
If ten people in one thread are complaining about the same thing, you have found a market gap. If a hundred people are upvoting those comments, you have found a business.
Chris Kernaghan
3. Translate Hate into Features
Once you have your list of complaints, you can flip them into solutions.
- The Complaint: I hate it when recruiters lie about how many meetings a team has.
- The Feature: A "Meeting-Light" filter on your job board.
- The Complaint: I never know if a company actually contributes to Open Source.
- The Feature: A verified "OSS Committer" badge for company profiles.
4. Use the Secret Handshake
The final step is signaling that you actually listened. In 2026, founders know that polish can often feel like a mask for a lack of utility.
When you launch, your messaging should not be "Check out this cool new app." It should be: I saw everyone in this thread complaining about this specific pain, so I built a tool to fix it.
This is not marketing. It is a solution. When your product looks and feels like it was born from a community’s shared frustration, you do not have to sell it. The community will claim it as their own.
