Why Reddit
People go to Reddit to ask for help with problems they can't solve, in their own words and without a sales pitch in sight. That makes it one of the best places to see whether a problem is real, how people describe it and what they've already tried.
Doing it by hand
- Start from the problem, not the product
- Search for the words someone with the problem would type: “chasing late invoices”, not “invoice automation”.
- Find the subreddits
- Look at where the matching posts are. Those communities are where you'll find your first users later.
- Read for signals
- Posts that ask for a tool, complain about a workaround or mention paying are stronger than posts that only vent.
- Check it's recent
- A problem people described last week is live. One from five years ago may be solved.
Or let the search do it
The search above does those steps in about 25 seconds: it turns your idea into the phrases people use, searches Reddit's past week, drops posts that match weakly and shows the rest. Then, if you want, Ghostlaunch reaches those people with a page built for your idea.
Questions
How do I find pain points on Reddit?
Search for the problem in the words a customer would use, not the name of your product. Open the subreddits where matching posts appear, sort by new, and note posts that ask for a tool, complain about a workaround or mention money. The demand finder above runs those searches for you in about 25 seconds.
Is the Reddit demand finder free?
Yes. The search is free and needs no account. It shows up to 10 matching posts from Reddit's past week, each with its subreddit, age, title, a short excerpt and a link. Ghostlaunch charges only if you ask it to build a page for your idea and run a 7-day test with real visitors.
Can I contact the people who posted?
Not from here: we don't show usernames. You can open each post and read the whole thread, which is often where the most useful detail is. If you run a Ghostlaunch test, we reach people who asked for a fix and point them to the page built for your idea.
Which subreddits does it search?
All of Reddit. It doesn't start from a fixed list: it searches for the phrases people use when they have the problem, so posts come from wherever those people are. Each result shows its subreddit, which tells you where your first users gather and where to look next.