What to Do After Finding Pain Points: A Founder's Action Guide

You’ve done the hard work of identifying pain points in your target market. Maybe you’ve spent hours scrolling through Reddit threads, conducting user interviews, or analyzing competitor reviews. Now you’re sitting on a list of problems people are facing, and you’re wondering: “What now?”

Finding pain points is just the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey. The real challenge - and opportunity - lies in what you do after finding pain points. Many founders get stuck at this stage, paralyzed by too many options or unsure how to move from discovery to execution. This guide will walk you through a systematic approach to validate, prioritize, and transform those pain points into a viable product or business.

Whether you’re a first-time founder or a seasoned entrepreneur, understanding the next steps after pain point discovery can mean the difference between building something people actually want and wasting months on a solution nobody needs.

Validate That the Pain Point Is Real

Before you invest time and resources into solving a problem, you need to confirm it’s not just noise. Not every complaint or frustration represents a genuine business opportunity. Here’s how to validate whether the pain points you’ve found are worth pursuing:

Look for Frequency and Intensity

A real pain point appears repeatedly across multiple sources and is expressed with genuine emotion. When you’re reviewing feedback, ask yourself:

• How many people are mentioning this problem?
• How strongly do they express their frustration?
• Are they actively seeking solutions or just venting?
• Does this problem appear across different platforms and communities?

If you found the pain point mentioned once in a single forum post, it might not be significant enough. However, if dozens of people across multiple Reddit threads, Twitter discussions, and review sites are complaining about the same issue, you’re likely onto something real.

Check for Current Workarounds

People experiencing genuine pain points often create makeshift solutions. These workarounds are gold for entrepreneurs because they demonstrate both the severity of the problem and proof that people are willing to take action to solve it.

Look for evidence that people are:

• Using multiple tools together to achieve what one tool should do
• Building custom spreadsheets or manual processes
• Paying for expensive solutions that partially solve the problem
• Spending significant time on tasks that could be automated

When someone says “I’ve been using Zapier to connect five different tools because nothing does what I need,” that’s a validated pain point worth exploring.

Conduct Validation Interviews

Once you’ve identified promising pain points, reach out to people who’ve expressed these frustrations. You don’t need a large sample size - even five to ten conversations can provide invaluable insights.

During these conversations, focus on:

• Understanding the context around their problem
• Learning about their current solution attempts
• Discovering what they’ve already tried
• Gauging their willingness to pay for a solution
• Identifying related problems they face

The key is to listen more than you talk. Don’t pitch your solution idea yet - you’re still in validation mode. Ask open-ended questions like “Tell me about the last time you encountered this problem” or “How much time do you spend dealing with this each week?”

Prioritize Pain Points Based on Opportunity

After validating your pain points, you’ll likely have several viable options. Most founders make the mistake of trying to tackle everything at once or picking the problem that excites them most personally. Instead, use a systematic approach to prioritize.

Use the ICE Framework

The ICE framework helps you score opportunities based on three factors:

• Impact: How significantly would solving this improve users’ lives?
• Confidence: How confident are you that this problem exists and people will pay for a solution?
• Ease: How feasible is it for you to build a solution with your current resources?

Score each pain point from 1-10 on all three dimensions, then calculate the average. This gives you an objective way to compare opportunities and identify the most promising starting point.

Consider Market Size and Accessibility

A validated pain point isn’t valuable if you can’t reach the people who have it. Evaluate:

• How large is the addressable market?
• Can you easily reach these people through specific communities or channels?
• Are there existing distribution channels you can leverage?
• What’s the competitive landscape like?

Sometimes a slightly less intense pain point with better market accessibility is the smarter choice for a bootstrap founder.

Turning Pain Points Into Product Ideas

Now comes the exciting part: designing a solution. Remember, the goal isn’t to build the most feature-rich product - it’s to solve the specific pain point as efficiently as possible.

Define Your Minimum Viable Solution

What’s the simplest version of a solution that would meaningfully address this pain point? Strip away all the nice-to-have features and focus ruthlessly on the core problem.

For example, if the pain point is “scheduling meetings across time zones is confusing and error-prone,” your MVP might be a simple tool that shows multiple time zones side-by-side, not a full calendar integration with AI-powered scheduling.

Map the User Journey

Understanding what happens before, during, and after the pain point helps you design a more complete solution:

• Before: What triggers the problem? What’s the user trying to accomplish?
• During: What exactly goes wrong? What friction exists?
• After: What’s the desired outcome? What would success look like?

This journey mapping often reveals adjacent problems you can solve or features that would increase adoption.

How PainOnSocial Streamlines Your Validation Process

When you’re ready to validate and prioritize your pain points systematically, PainOnSocial takes the guesswork out of the process. Instead of manually sorting through thousands of Reddit comments and trying to determine which problems are most significant, PainOnSocial’s AI-powered analysis does the heavy lifting for you.

The platform automatically scores pain points from 0-100 based on frequency and intensity, giving you the data you need to prioritize confidently. Each pain point comes with real evidence - actual quotes from users, permalink references, and upvote counts - so you can quickly validate whether a problem is worth pursuing. This evidence-based approach means you’re not relying on gut feeling or anecdotal data; you’re seeing exactly how often people mention the problem and how strongly they feel about it.

For founders who want to move quickly from discovery to validation, PainOnSocial’s curated catalog of 30+ subreddits organized by category helps you zero in on the right communities without spending days researching where your target audience hangs out. You can filter by community size and topic, then dive straight into analyzing what problems people are actively discussing.

Create a Landing Page and Test Demand

Before writing a single line of code, validate that people will actually pay for your solution. A simple landing page can tell you whether you’re onto something real.

What Your Landing Page Should Include

Your validation landing page doesn’t need to be fancy, but it should clearly communicate:

• The specific problem you’re solving (using language from your pain point research)
• How your solution addresses this problem
• Key benefits and outcomes
• A clear call-to-action (email signup, waitlist, or pre-order)
• Social proof if available (testimonials from validation interviews)

Keep it simple and focused. The goal is to test whether your value proposition resonates, not to win design awards.

Drive Targeted Traffic

Send traffic from the exact communities where you found the pain points. This gives you the most accurate signal about product-market fit.

Try these tactics:

• Share your landing page in relevant Reddit threads (providing value, not spamming)
• Engage in Facebook groups where this problem is discussed
• Reach out directly to people who’ve expressed the pain point
• Run small, targeted ad campaigns to specific communities
• Post on Product Hunt or Indie Hackers for feedback

Track not just signups, but also bounce rate, time on page, and which sections get the most engagement. This data tells you whether your messaging hits the mark.

Build Your MVP and Get It in Users’ Hands

Once you’ve validated demand through your landing page, it’s time to build. The key principle here is speed over perfection.

Choose the Right MVP Approach

Depending on your pain point and technical abilities, different MVP approaches make sense:

• Manual MVP: Deliver the solution manually before automating (e.g., Zapier founders manually connected apps for early users)
• Concierge MVP: Provide white-glove service to understand the problem deeply
• No-code MVP: Use tools like Bubble, Webflow, or Airtable to build without coding
• Single-feature product: Build only the core functionality that solves the main pain point

The manual and concierge approaches are particularly powerful because they let you learn quickly without significant development investment. You’re solving the problem for real users while figuring out exactly what your product needs to do.

Launch to a Small, Engaged Group

Don’t aim for a massive launch. Instead, get your MVP into the hands of 10-20 people who’ve expressed the strongest pain around this problem. These early adopters will:

• Give you detailed feedback on what works and what doesn’t
• Help you identify bugs and edge cases
• Validate whether your solution actually solves their problem
• Become advocates if you nail the solution

Stay close to these early users. Schedule regular check-ins, watch them use your product, and iterate based on their real behavior, not just their feedback.

Measure Success and Iterate

How do you know if you’ve successfully addressed the pain point? Define clear success metrics before you launch.

Key Metrics to Track

Depending on your product type, focus on metrics that indicate real value delivery:

• Activation rate: How many signups actually use the core feature?
• Retention: Do users come back? (This is the ultimate validation)
• Time saved or value created: Can you quantify the benefit?
• Net Promoter Score: Would users recommend your solution?
• Willingness to pay: Will free users convert to paid?

The most important question to ask early users: “How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use this product?” If more than 40% say “very disappointed,” you’re likely onto product-market fit.

Create a Feedback Loop

Establish systematic ways to gather ongoing feedback:

• In-app surveys at key moments
• Regular user interviews (even after launch)
• Usage analytics to see where people struggle
• Community spaces where users can request features and report issues

Remember, the pain points you initially discovered might evolve as you solve them. Stay connected to your users’ changing needs.

Scale Your Solution

Once you’ve validated that your solution works for your initial users, it’s time to think about growth. But don’t scale too quickly - premature scaling kills more startups than almost anything else.

Double Down on What’s Working

Before expanding to new features or markets, optimize what you’ve already built:

• Make the onboarding smoother
• Improve the core value delivery
• Enhance the user experience based on feedback
• Build the minimum features needed for broader adoption

Your goal is to get to a point where new users can succeed without hand-holding. Once you achieve this, scaling becomes much more sustainable.

Expand Strategically

When you’re ready to grow, consider these expansion strategies:

• Adjacent pain points in the same user base
• Same pain point in related markets
• Building depth before breadth (becoming the best solution for a specific use case)

Each expansion should be validated just like your initial pain point. Don’t assume that because you solved one problem successfully, related problems will be equally valuable.

Conclusion

Discovering pain points is an achievement, but transforming that discovery into a successful product requires deliberate action. By following this framework - validating thoroughly, prioritizing strategically, building minimally, and iterating based on real feedback - you dramatically increase your chances of building something people actually want.

Remember these key takeaways:

• Validate pain points with real evidence, not assumptions
• Prioritize based on impact, confidence, and ease
• Start with the simplest solution that addresses the core problem
• Test demand before building
• Launch small and stay close to early users
• Let data and user behavior guide your iterations

The journey from pain point discovery to product success isn’t always linear, and you’ll inevitably face setbacks and pivots along the way. But by approaching the process systematically and staying focused on solving real problems for real people, you’re setting yourself up for long-term success.

Ready to find your next validated pain point and put this framework into action? Start by listening to your target market, documenting their frustrations, and following the steps outlined above. Your next successful product might be just one pain point away.