I'm sure everyone here can relate to pouring their hearts out into building businesses only to watch them flop. Trust me, I've been there. Ever since I got tired of being a freelance writer/developer, I've been using all of my free time and energy into building something meaningful that could also help pay my bills on the side. Unfortunately, it's been difficult to find the right type of idea to work on when one has SO MANY ideas on what to build.

One of the best things to have come out of the frustration I faced in this process was how much the process itself evolved.

This might seem obvious to many of you but to me, I let my interests and comfort do the talking and always picked ideas that "seemed right" to me. Over time, instead of relying solely on my "gut", I started looking online at what people were discussing. I started looking more closely at data.

Here's what I do now:

The Tools I Use

1. Perplexity and ChatGPT with search

Unlike Google, instead of getting a list of links, you get actual answers with sources. But these hallucinate and it's very important to use them strategically and alongside other tools.

My go-to prompts:

"What are the biggest pain points in [industry] that people consistently complain about?" "What are people willing to pay for but unhappy with current solutions in [industry]?" "What are the emerging trends and unmet needs in [industry] for 2024?" 

Tip: Use the follow-up feature. When Perplexity or ChatGPT mention something interesting, dig deeper with specific questions about that pain point.

2. GigaBrain

GigaBrain uses scraped data from Reddit and YouTube. It's great for looking at what people are discussing on specific subreddits but through a macro lens. I use it to validate what I find on Perplexity.

For e.g. if I was looking for solutions people are looking to pay for as far as web development tools or services are concerned, I'd run a bunch of prompts on Perplexity. Then I'd take part of those results, say "User Experience (UX) Enhancement" and run those on GigaBrain.

My Exact Process

1. Broad Research (30 mins)

   - Pick an industry

   - Run 3-4 broad searches on Perplexity

   - Save anything interesting

2. Deep Dive (1 hour)

   - Take those interesting points to GigaBrain

   - Look for repeated complaints

   - Pay attention to pricing discussions

   - Save threads where people are actively looking for solutions

3. Validation (1 hour)

   - Back to Perplexity for market size checks

   - Look for existing solutions

   - Check regulatory requirements

   - Estimate potential market size

---

This entire process is pretty much free. Perplexity has a free tier, and GigaBrain is stupidly cheap for what it offers.

What do you think about these tools? What's your validation process like? Would love to hear what tools others are using.