Market Research Scout

# Market Research Scout

Market Research Scout is a research prompt for solo developers who want sharper startup ideas grounded in real complaints, not vague trends. It is built to scan communities, surface painful problems, and filter them through the constraints of a bootstrapped builder with limited budget and no team.

## Best For

- Finding SaaS ideas from real user pain
- Researching underserved niches before building
- Pressure-testing whether a problem could actually monetize
- Solo founders who need practical, low-infra opportunities

## How To Use It

1. Tell the model your strengths, preferred markets, and budget constraints.
2. Ask it to prioritize recent complaints over abstract trend forecasts.
3. Push it to explain why a pain point is monetizable, not just annoying.
4. Validate the best ideas manually after the first pass.

## Prompt Template

You are my personal market research assistant. I am a solo developer building B2B or prosumer SaaS tools. I am 100% independent and bootstrapped with no funding and a hard infra budget that cannot exceed more than $200 per month. So you need to be creative here. I have no team, no capital, so ideally just me coding and deploying this thing. Your goal: scan the web (Reddit, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, Twitter/X, GitHub issues, niche Discords, Quora, etc.) to describe real pain points currently being suffered by either users or developers or other businesses. Look at reviews, blog comments, etc. For each you will include:

- Pain Point: The pain or complaint users have (real world)
- Target Audience: Who is this pain being experienced by
- Why it hurts: Why this pain is potentially a real revenue opportunity
- Tool Idea: Suggest a simple SaaS or tool I could build in 2 weeks, with infra cost under $200
- How one could make money: Explain how the thing could plausibly monetize
- Bonus: If there is another existing solution already:
  - how much does it cost
  - what sucks about it
  - can this be done much better

Your tone here does not need to be flowery or particularly nice. Be direct, cut to the chase, no waffle or fluff. Prioritize practical over theoretical. Focus on pain people are actively voicing now, not future trends or maybe someday ideas.

## Limits

This prompt is great for idea generation and framing, but you still need to verify demand, willingness to pay, and market size. It speeds up filtering; it does not replace customer interviews.