4. Finding Market Gaps by Analysing Startup Pain Points
How to Find Hidden Market Gaps by Analysing Startup Pain Points
In our last article, we used social media to identify a list of interesting startups. Now, it’s time for the next step: analysing them to find user pain points. The goal is to discover a market gap we can fill.
As a reminder, here is our list:
Minea: $75k MRR
Arvow: $70k MRR
Dropmagic.ai: $35k MRR
N8n contractor: $25k MRR
Habitkit: $15k MRR
Hyperping: $15k MRR
Screenshotone: $10k MRR
Reelfarm: $10k MRR
Pdfshift: $10k MRR
DataFast (Marc Lou): $8k MRR
web.vidon.ai: $6k MRR
Klap AI: $4k MRR
vibe3d ai: $3k MRR
Writestack: $2k MRR
Taap: $2k MRR (Note: Has a spike at $10k, but the base MRR provided is $2k)
Replymer: $1k MRR
Finding Pain Points
We can find app discussions on platforms like Reddit, G2, app stores, Trustpilot, Hacker News, and general social media. We are specifically looking for users complaining about missing features or instances where the tool failed to meet their needs.
Our first step is to use Google with exact match search queries. For example:
“datafast” issues reddit
We could try to automate this with a paid service. However, since we aren’t analysing a huge number of tools, we can perform the initial analysis ourselves. Later, we’ll move on to deep-insight tools, like Ahrefs.
Let’s analyse a few.
DataFast
I mostly see positive responses on Reddit, with little explanation for any negative opinions. (Well done, Marc Lou!)
Marc is big on X, so it makes sense to find feedback there. Unfortunately, many of the posts are from his fans, making it hard to find negative experiences to latch onto. We are looking for disgruntled users who feel ignored, and tackling a product so closely tied to a strong personality like Marc’s might be too much to chew.
DropMagic
The Reddit posts are all positive, but they feel like they might be from the founder.
On X, it’s clear the founder has found a real niche: dropshippers who want to build a store as quickly as possible. One takeaway is to identify a specific target group and market heavily to them.
Another angle is to connect with dropshippers directly to understand their broader concerns. Fortunately, the dropshipping community is very active on Reddit. It seems worthwhile to investigate this group more deeply and see what they’re missing.
Minea
Minea analyses products before you set up dropshipping. It also helps build the store, similar to DropMagic.
The main criticism seems to be saturation: since everyone uses Minea, everyone gets the same insights. This creates huge competition as soon as products appear on the platform. Minea also offers a full coaching program, which is reportedly intense, with mixed results.
Ultimately, users struggle because the products it finds are too competitive. This has led to competitor tools like ShopHunter. While ShopHunter is poorly reviewed (based on ~50 reviews on Trustpilot), the reviews validate the demand. Perhaps there’s an angle for a tool with exclusivity—for example, a cap of 100 accounts. This would ensure the insights remain exclusive and could justify a premium price.
On a related note, users seem happier with NicheScraper, but its app looks dated. Creating a polished, modern competitor is a definite possibility.
Arvow
Arvow is an SEO-optimised content generator. This is a very competitive market, where tools differentiate themselves on CRM integrations, AI capabilities, and pricing.
There’s plenty of negative feedback on Trustpilot. Users mainly complain that basic features don’t work as advertised. The pricing is also considered high, and customers are unhappy with the feature tiering.
An interesting angle here would be to identify popular but underserved integrations. The next steps would be to test Arvow with these specific integrations to see where it fails, and then repeat that process with its main competitors.
That’s all for the analysis of the first batch. Subscribe for the next post, where we’ll continue our competitor deep dive!