The problem with how founders validate ideas today
You have an idea. You think it might be good. So you do what everyone says you should do: you build a landing page.
You pick a domain. You write copy. You try to sound exciting but not too salesy. You add a hero image, maybe a waitlist form. You share it on Twitter, Reddit, maybe a few Slack communities. You wait.
Some people sign up. Maybe ten. Maybe fifty if you got lucky with timing. You feel a small rush of validation. But then what? Do those signups mean anything? Did they sign up because they have a real problem, or because your copy was good? Because they’re genuinely interested, or just being polite?
Most validation today is built on misleading signals. Landing pages measure curiosity, not pain. Email signups measure politeness, not urgency. Conversion rates tell you if your page works, not if your idea solves a problem people actually have.
And the worst part: you spent days on all of this before learning anything real.
Why pain matters more than interest
There’s a difference between someone saying “yeah, that sounds cool” and someone saying “I deal with this every week and it’s exhausting.”
One is interest. The other is pain.
Interest is passive. Pain is active. People with real pain are already looking for solutions. They’re using bad workarounds. They’re complaining in Reddit threads. They’re willing to pay, switch tools, or change behavior because the problem is costing them time, money, or sanity.
When you validate an idea through a landing page, you often capture interest. Someone reads your copy, thinks “neat,” and drops their email. But that doesn’t mean they’ll use your product. It doesn’t even mean they have the problem you think they have.
Pain is harder to fake. If someone reacts strongly to a specific pain point, that’s a signal. Not a perfect one, but a better one than a polite signup.
The goal isn’t to get people excited about your solution. It’s to confirm that the problem you think exists actually does, and that it matters enough for someone to care.
The personal founder problem behind validatemy.app
This product exists because of a specific kind of chaos that most early-stage founders know well.
You’re researching an idea. You find a Reddit post where someone complains about exactly the problem you’re thinking about. You screenshot it. You save it to your phone. Later, you’re in a Discord and someone mentions the same pain. You paste the link into Notion. Then you see a tweet. You bookmark it. Then someone DMs you a story. You add it to a Google Doc.
Before long, you have scattered evidence of pain across six places. You’re busy. You’re collecting signal. But you’re not confident. You don’t know which pain points are real and which are just loud. You don’t know if this is a problem five people have or five thousand.
You’re context-switching constantly. You’re managing ideas in your head. And when it’s time to decide whether to build something, you’re going off vibes and a messy pile of screenshots.
This is the problem validatemy.app was built to solve. Not validation in the abstract. Validation as a founder actually experiences it: scattered, chaotic, and hard to act on.
A different way to validate ideas
What if instead of building a landing page, you just listed the pain points?
Not your solution. Not your pitch. Just the problems you think people have, written plainly.
Then you put those pain points in front of people and let them react. Not with long-form feedback. Not with essay responses. Just quick, honest reactions: “This hits” or “Not my problem.”
No login. No commitment. No friction. Just signal.
This is the approach validatemy.app takes. You run ideas as projects. You add pain points to each project. You can attach context to those pain points—links to Reddit threads, tweets, DMs, anything that made you think the pain was real. Then you share a simple interface where people react to each pain point.
The format can vary. You can show pain points as a feed, like scrolling through TikTok. You can make it swipeable, like Tinder. You can use a simple list or step people through one at a time. The format matters less than the focus: you’re testing pain, not packaging.
People react. You see which pain points resonate. You see which ones don’t. You collect optional contact info if someone wants to stay in touch—email, Reddit username, X handle, or a meeting link. But the core signal is the reaction itself.
How validatemy.app works in practice
Let’s say you’re thinking about building a tool for freelance designers who struggle to get clear feedback from clients.
You don’t build the tool yet. You don’t even name it. You start with the pain.
You create a project in validatemy.app. You list the pain points you think exist:
- Clients give vague feedback like “make it pop” or “needs more energy”
- You do three rounds of revisions and still don’t understand what they want
- Feedback comes through email, Slack, text, and verbal notes with no clear record
- You waste hours guessing what they mean instead of designing
- You’ve lost clients because they felt unheard, even though you tried
You attach context. Maybe you link to a Reddit post where a designer vented about this. Maybe you screenshot a DM someone sent you. Maybe you reference a Twitter thread.
Then you share the validation page. You post it in a design community. You DM it to a few designers you know. You drop it in a Slack group.
People react. Twenty people say “this hits” on the vague feedback pain point. Five people react to the multiple-channels problem. Two people react to the client loss one.
Now you know something. Vague feedback is the real pain. Multi-channel chaos is secondary. Client loss is either rare or not framed the right way.
You didn’t spend time on branding. You didn’t buy a domain. You didn’t write clever copy. You just tested whether the pain you thought existed actually does.
What this helps founders avoid
Landing pages aren’t bad. But they come with baggage.
You spend time on copy. You agonize over the headline. You pick colors. You argue with yourself about whether the CTA should say “Join waitlist” or “Get early access.” You tweak the hero image. You overthink the tagline.
All of this happens before you know if the problem is real.
With validatemy.app, you skip that. You don’t need a domain. You don’t need branding. You don’t need polished explanations of your solution. You’re not selling anything yet. You’re just asking: does this problem exist?
You also avoid fake validation. Someone signing up for a waitlist is not the same as someone saying “I have this exact problem.” Signups feel good, but they’re often just noise. A reaction to a specific pain point is a clearer signal.
And you avoid overbuilding. If three out of ten pain points resonate and seven don’t, you just learned something important. You can kill the weak ones. You can double down on the strong ones. You can test new pain points without starting over.
Who this is for
This tool makes sense if you’re:
- A solopreneur testing multiple ideas and trying to figure out which one to commit to
- An indie hacker who wants to validate before you write a single line of code
- An early-stage SaaS founder who’s tired of building things no one wants
- A builder who’s done the landing page thing before and felt like it didn’t tell you much
It’s for people who want to move fast, but not recklessly. Who want signal, not vanity metrics. Who are willing to kill ideas that don’t have legs.
It’s not for people who already know their market deeply and just need to execute. It’s not for founders raising venture capital who need polished materials. It’s for the messy early stage, where you’re still figuring out what’s real.
What success looks like
Success with validatemy.app doesn’t mean hundreds of reactions. It means clarity.
It means killing three weak ideas in a week instead of spending months on them.
It means seeing that one pain point gets ten times more reactions than the others, so you know where to focus.
It means having the confidence to commit to an idea because you’ve seen real people say “yes, this problem is mine.”
It also means avoiding the trap of false confidence. If no one reacts to your pain points, that’s useful too. It’s not fun, but it’s better to learn that now than after you’ve built the product.
The goal isn’t to validate your idea. The goal is to figure out which ideas are worth your time.
Closing
Most founders validate ideas by pitching solutions. Landing pages, demos, prototypes. But solutions are guesses. Pain is real.
If you start with pain, you learn faster. You avoid building things no one needs. You stop wasting time on polish before you have substance.
validatemy.app is built for that. It’s a tool for organizing pain points, testing them with real people, and getting signal without the ceremony.
If you’re tired of landing pages that don’t teach you much, or if you’re juggling ideas and context across too many tools, try validating pain first. Start with the problem. See if it’s real. Then decide what to build.