ProblemHub #1: Broken Task Managers, the Salary Guessing Game, and an AI Co-pilot
A deep dive into 3 SaaS opportunities you could start building this month.
Welcome to Issue
#1of ProblemHub!
I'm Zack Shue, and this is your weekly deep dive into real, unsolved business problems. My goal is to save you hundreds of hours of research so you can focus on what you do best: building.
Pain Point #1: Task Managers Track 'Todos', Not 'Work'
🗣️Voices from the Trenches:
"My main problem is context switching. My tasks are in Todoist, but the actual work is in Google Docs, Figma, or my code editor. I'm constantly jumping back and forth, losing focus..."
- via a discussion on Indie Hackers
🧐 Why It's an Opportunity:
This pain point is subtle but massive. Traditional to-do list apps manage a list of strings (the task names), but they ignore the actual context of the work.
High-Frequency Pain: For knowledge workers, switching between apps is a constant energy drain and a primary source of distraction.
Huge, Evergreen Market: The productivity software market is worth billions, but there's always room for innovation that genuinely improves workflows.
Existing Solutions Are Flawed: Most tools try to solve this with clunky integrations. The market needs a new approach where the "task" and the "work asset" (the doc, the design, the code) are natively linked.
🕵️♂️ Players on the Field:
The New Challengers (e.g., Akiflow, Motion): These powerful "all-in-one" tools prove that users are willing to pay a premium for better workflow integration. However, they are often expensive ($20+/month) and can be too complex for users who just want a simple solution.
The Titans (e.g., Todoist, Things 3): They are masters of simplicity and have huge user bases. Their strength is also their weakness: by focusing only on the task list, they create this exact opportunity gap for a context-aware competitor.
🚀 The MVP Idea:
The opportunity here is not to out-feature the giants, but to be "just right". You can start with a "Lightweight Contextual Task Manager".
Core Feature: A simple task manager where every to-do item can have a URL (from Google Docs, Figma, GitHub, etc.) attached as its primary "work asset." Clicking a task instantly shows you a preview of the linked work.
Pricing Strategy: Price it aggressively at $5-8/month to target users who find Todoist too simple but Akiflow too expensive.
Growth Engine: A powerful browser extension that lets users create a task from any webpage with one click, automatically attaching the source URL.
Pain Point #2: The Salary Guessing Game: Wasting Time on Underpaid Roles
🗣️ Voices from the Trenches:
"My biggest frustration is going through three or four rounds of interviews, spending hours preparing and talking to people, only to get to the offer stage and find out the salary is 40% less than what I currently make. It's a complete waste of everyone's time. If they had just been upfront with the pay range, we could have saved weeks of effort."
- via a discussion on Reddit
🧐 Why It's an Opportunity:
High Cost of Mismatch: This problem wastes significant time and resources for both sides. For the company, it means hours of expensive employee time (managers, engineers) are spent interviewing candidates who were never a viable financial fit.
Massive, Frustrated Market: This is a near-universal frustration among job seekers. Companies that are transparent with salary gain a significant competitive advantage in attracting talent that respects their time.
Growing Legal Trend: With states and cities (like California, NYC, Colorado) increasingly mandating salary transparency, companies in other regions have an opportunity to get ahead of the curve and be seen as progressive employers.
🕵️♂️ Players on the Field:
Glassdoor / Levels.fyi: These are crowdsourced data platforms. Their primary weakness is that the data can be inaccurate, outdated, or completely missing for specific roles, especially in smaller companies or niche industries. They are a reactive tool for candidates, not a proactive solution for employers.
Manual Research: Hiring managers spend hours searching competitors' job postings and salary sites to try and piece together a competitive offer. This process is time-consuming, unscientific, and often leads to posting a range that is too low (scaring off talent) or too high (wasting budget).
🚀 The MVP Idea:
Build a "Salary Benchmarking SaaS for SMBs." The service would be a simple web app where a founder or hiring manager can input a job title, experience level, and location. The tool then aggregates real-time data from various sources to provide a validated, competitive salary range for that specific role. The core value is saving research time and reducing the risk of a mismatch. You could offer a "Good, Better, Best" range (e.g., 50th, 75th, and 90th percentile) to help them align with their budget and hiring strategy. This could be sold as a per-report fee ($99/report) or a simple monthly subscription for companies that hire frequently.
Pain Point #3: The Human Punching Bag: Powerlessness in Customer-Facing Roles
🗣️ Voices from the Trenches:
"I work in a call center. The absolute worst part is being forced to be a sponge for someone's rage over a company policy I have zero power to change. I have to listen to them scream at me, call me names, and threaten me, all while my screen is flashing that my call time is too long. I'm not a person to them; I'm just a faceless obstacle."
- via a discussion on Reddit
🧐 Why It's an Opportunity:
Drives Extremely High Churn: This emotional abuse is a primary driver of burnout and turnover in customer service, retail, and hospitality. High churn is incredibly expensive for businesses due to constant recruiting and training costs.
Massive, Underserved Market: Millions of people work in these front-line roles. While companies invest in ticketing systems, they often neglect the real-time mental health and effectiveness of their agents.
Direct Impact on Customer Satisfaction: An agent who is stressed, flustered, and unsupported cannot provide good service. Solving the agent's pain directly improves the customer's experience.
🕵️♂️ Players on the Field:
Helpdesk Software (Zendesk, Intercom): These platforms are excellent for managing tickets and customer history but do little to actively assist the agent during a stressful live interaction. They log the problem but don't help solve it in the moment.
Corporate De-escalation Training: This training is often generic, infrequent, and hard to recall and apply when under the stress of a real-time verbal assault.
🚀 The MVP Idea:
Build an "Agent Assist AI Co-pilot." This would be a SaaS tool that plugs into existing helpdesk platforms (like Zendesk). During a live chat or call (using real-time transcription), the AI would provide a private on-screen support widget for the agent. Its key features would be:
1) Sentiment Analysis: It would detect rising customer anger and flash an alert.
2) Real-time De-escalation Prompts: It would suggest specific, calming phrases for the agent to use.
3) Instant Knowledge Base Search: As the customer mentions keywords (e.g., "refund," "broken"), the AI would instantly pull up the relevant policy documents, so the agent isn't scrambling for info.
This tool helps the agent feel supported and more in control, leading to better outcomes and lower churn.
That's all for this week!.
Which problem got you most excited? Or did you spot a problem yourself? Just hit 'reply' and let me know – I read and respond to every email. 🏃♂️💛
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