A Redditor Analyzed 9,300+ 'I Wish This Existed' Posts. Here Is What The Market Actually Wants.

Founders often fall into a dangerous trap: building what they think people want, rather than what people are actively asking for.

Market validation usually involves expensive surveys or awkward cold DMs. But sometimes, the market screams its needs into the void. A developer recently scraped and analyzed a massive dataset of 9,363 posts from Reddit communities where users describe their pain points and ask for software that doesn't exist yet.

The dataset, processed by a developer on Reddit, covers six months of "I wish there was an app for this" requests. The results are counter-intuitive and expose a major gap between what founders are building (AI wrappers) and what users actually need.

Here are the 6 data-backed opportunities hidden in the noise.

1. The "Anti-Cloud" Rebellion (7% of Requests)

While the VC world is obsessed with cloud-native SaaS, the users are moving in the opposite direction. A significant 7% of all requests specifically asked for offline-first or privacy-focused tools.

Users are citing "subscription fatigue" and privacy concerns. They want local-only versions of popular productivity apps. This aligns with the growing demand in the Personal Cloud Market and specific segments of Edge Security.

The Opportunity: A "Buy Once, Use Forever" local productivity tool that syncs via iCloud/Local Network rather than a proprietary server.

Why This Matters: When 1 in 14 users explicitly requests offline functionality in a world dominated by cloud services, you're looking at a meaningful counter-trend. This isn't noise - it's a rebellion against the SaaS status quo.

2. The "Willingness to Pay" Paradox

The analysis separated "Volume" (how many people ask for it) from "Value" (how many people used words like buy, price, premium).

The Volume Trap

Productivity had the most requests (1,231 posts). It's crowded, loud, and competitive.

The Revenue Reality

Finance had the highest concentration of "pay signals."

Users aren't looking for another free to-do list. They're looking for specialized portfolio trackers, risk analysis tools, and banking dashboards. They explicitly mentioned wanting "premium" versions that handle data securely. The Financial Wellness Software Market is seeing this shift firsthand as users move from simple tracking to complex planning.

Insight: If you want users, build Productivity. If you want revenue, build Finance.

3. The "Frustration Index" (Long Rants = Good Markets)

The analysis used an interesting metric: Post Length. The logic is that a short post implies a mild inconvenience, while a long, detailed post implies deep, unresolved pain.

Three categories had the highest "Frustration Scores" (avg. 200+ words per post):

Developer Platforms

Engineers writing technical essays about missing features in AWS or NetSuite. This mirrors the complexity seen in the DevOps Market and Cloud Native Application Market.

Parenting

Parents describing complex needs for tracking sleep, milestones, and school schedules.

Cooking

Users are furious about "bloated" recipe sites buried under ads and SEO life stories. While the AI in Food & Beverages Market is booming for enterprise, the consumer side is broken.

The Opportunity: A minimalist, text-only recipe manager that strips away the "blog" aspect would solve a high-frustration problem immediately.

4. The "ADHD" Super-Users

Surprisingly, the r/ADHD subreddit emerged as one of the highest-signal communities for software developers.

These users aren't asking for generic tools. They're providing detailed feature specifications because current workflows fail them. They're hyper-aware of UI/UX friction and represent a massive, underserved niche for highly specific workflow tools.

Why This Is Gold:

They articulate problems better than most product managers
They're willing to pay for tools that actually work
They become evangelists when something finally solves their problem
The ADHD population represents 4-5% of adults globally - that's a huge TAM overlapping with the Digital Therapeutics Market.

5. Timing: The "Monday Blues" Spike

The data shows a clear behavioral trend: frustration peaks on Mondays and Tuesdays.

People start their work week, hit a wall with their current inefficient software, and go to Reddit to complain or search for alternatives.

Actionable Tip: If you're launching on Product Hunt or running ads, align your push with the Monday/Tuesday frustration spike. This is when people are actively looking for solutions.

6. What's Heating Up Right Now (Q1 2026)

Looking at the most recent 60-day trend, two categories are spiking:

Health & Wellness

Driven by "New Year" resolutions, people are hunting for habit-builders and gym trackers. This seasonal spike correlates perfectly with the Fitness App Market growth cycles.

Smart Home Visualization

People have the hardware (sensors), but they hate the software. There's a surge in demand for better graphs and dashboards to visualize home data (temperature, energy usage) over time. Demand is shifting from hardware to data, driving the Smart Home Energy Monitoring Devices Market.

The Pattern: Users don't need more IoT devices - they need better software to make sense of the devices they already own.

What NOT to Build (According to the Data)

Just as important as knowing what to build is knowing what to avoid:

✗ Another AI Wrapper - Users want tools that solve specific problems, not "ChatGPT but for X"

✗ Generic Productivity Apps - The space is saturated. Unless you have a unique angle, stay away.

✗ Social Platforms - Almost no requests for "new social networks." Users have platform fatigue.

✗ Crypto/Web3 Tools - Mentioned in less than 1% of posts. The hype has died down significantly.

How to Use This Data

This analysis gives you a massive shortcut, but it's not a crystal ball. Here's how to act on these insights:

Step 1: Pick Your Category

Based on your skills and interests, choose from the high-signal categories:

Finance (high willingness to pay)
Developer Tools (technical users with clear specs)
Parenting (deep frustration, loyal users)
Cooking (low barrier to entry, high frustration)

Step 2: Validate the Market Size

Reddit sentiment is great for finding problems, but you need to verify the opportunity is big enough.

Use Markethunt to:

Check the CAGR (growth rate) of your chosen industry
See the total addressable market size
Understand competitive dynamics
Identify related opportunities you might have missed

Step 3: Go Directly to Your Users

Now that you know where the pain is, go back to Reddit:

Join the specific subreddits
Read the detailed posts
DM the people who wrote long, specific requests
Ask them about their current workarounds

Step 4: Build the Minimum Viable Solution

Based on the frustration scores, you know these users are desperate for a solution. You don't need perfection - you need to solve the core problem quickly.

The Meta-Lesson: Listen to User Behavior, Not User Opinions

This dataset is powerful because it captures unsolicited feedback. These aren't people responding to a survey - they're voluntarily expressing pain points.

The hierarchy of signal quality:

Best: What people do (actual behavior)
Good: What people complain about (this Reddit data)
Okay: What people say they want (interviews)
Worst: What people say they might want (surveys)

Reddit posts fall into category #2 - which is far more reliable than traditional market research.

Summary: Where to Build?

Based on 9,300+ human signals, here's the cheat sheet for your next MVP:

For High Revenue: Build in Finance or E-commerce Logistics.

For High Loyalty: Build for Parents or Developers (solve their complex pain).

For Quick Wins: Build a Minimalist Recipe App (high frustration, low technical barrier).

For Underserved Markets: Build offline-first privacy tools or ADHD-specific workflow apps.

Your Next Steps

Validate the market size - Before you write a single line of code, check if the macro-economics back up the user sentiment. Search these industries on Markethunt to see growth rates and market size.
Join the communities - Get into the relevant subreddits and start conversations. These are your beta testers.
Build in public - Share your progress. The same communities that complained about the problem will become your first users.
Launch on Monday - Time your Product Hunt launch or ad campaigns for Monday/Tuesday when frustration is highest.

The data has spoken. The question is: will you listen?