What's the PROBLEM your product solves?
In the month that I've been here, I've been noticing a pattern in a lot of launches - strong demos, polished UI, clear outputs of "what it does."
But when I ask myself "What problem does this solve?" I sometimes have to dig for the answer. (I come by that thinking honestly - I've spent 33 years building and fixing businesses, so this is the lens I can't turn off.)
The products where the problem is obvious are the ones people actually buy - you see it, you go "oh, that's exactly my issue," and you're sold on it.
It also makes pitching easier. If you're clear on the problem, explaining your product to anyone - buyers, other makers, whoever - gets a lot simpler.
And it's a small tweak with a big payoff - naming the problem clearly in your launch messaging can be the difference between people scrolling past and people stopping to actually look.
Curious what others think: when you're checking out a launch here, do you look for the problem first, or does the demo/output usually sell you on its own?
Replies
The problem we solve: marketing AI doesn't think like a marketer.
I've spent 12+ years buying media, $100M+ in spend, and I'm in a bunch of marketer groups using every tool out there. Still haven't found one that thinks the way a marketer does. Cursor pulled that off for developers. Marketing doesn't have its version yet.
That's the gap. Your ads run 24/7 and you can't sit at your PC all day reacting to them. You need something that gets the why behind a decision, not just one that spits out copy.
On your question, I look for the problem first, always. A slick demo tells me it works. The problem tells me if anyone will pay for it. The launches I skip aren't the ugly ones, they're the ones where I can't tell who's losing sleep over this.
When the problem's fuzzy, do you dig or just move on? I go back and forth on whose job that is.
@nipuntaneja Ok, so you've identified the gap - feels like a heavy problem for Marketers. Feels like many of them are suffering in silence, resigned to the fact that there's nothing that can help them. Seems like whoever gets that product to market will have a hungry audience eating out of their hands! How close are you to solving that?
Good question - I nerd out on this stuff so I might dig in, but most Prospects are moving on - any friction and most don't stick around.
This is the right lens. A polished demo can make a product look impressive, but the problem statement is what tells people whether they should care.
The clearest products usually answer three questions fast: who is stuck, what painful workflow are they stuck in, and what changes after using the product. Features then become proof, not the headline. Especially with AI products, that distinction matters because “it uses AI” is not a problem. The problem is the costly human work or missed opportunity the AI removes.
@rahulbhavsar Yes, good points - lead with the OUTCOME! Think of it from the lens of: what's in it for THEM? What do they get from using the product/service?
Exactly. The clearer the outcome, the easier it is for a buyer to place the product in their own workflow. I think a lot of launches describe the feature first, but the stronger framing is: what pain disappears, what time is saved, or what better decision becomes possible.
@rahulbhavsar Good copy in your launch day messaging can make all the difference!
Retime
Great framing. For Retime, the problem is not "people need another calendar." It is that meeting work is split across too many places: availability in one tool, the calendar invite somewhere else, agenda in a doc, notes in another app, and follow-ups in someone's memory.
The meeting looks scheduled, but the work around it is not actually ready or closed. The problem we try to solve is making the before/during/after loop feel like one workflow instead of five handoffs. If I can explain that clearly, the features make sense; if I start with "scheduling + agendas + notes," it sounds like a checklist.
@hadifarnoud That calendar/meeting struggle is REAL! The problem you solve is well described but I challenge you to push that just a little further- What is the FEELING the user gets after using Retime?
Pull out the emotional reality that lies underneath the operational clarity you mentioned.
It's relief, unburdening, and mental energy that's freed up from something that shouldn't have drained it in the first place.
Does that make sense?
For me the problem is obvious only because I lived it first: I was on a sprint that quietly fell apart because nobody noticed the risk signals until it was too late — blocked tasks, creeping scope, no early warning. Jira told us the state of things, but not whether we were actually in trouble.
That's the one-sentence problem behind Rahnuma.io: dev teams have project management tools that show status, but not risk. So I built the forecasting layer I wished I'd had.
To answer your actual question though — I look for the problem first. A slick demo can sell me on "this is well-built," but only a clear problem statement sells me on "I need this." If I have to guess what pain it solves, I usually scroll past, even if the UI is great.
@muhammad_azhar21 Very interesting product build - what's the OUTCOME your product gives your Prospects? You felt the pain yourself but do others feel this, too? Does your product save time, money, or? Remember to lead with that in your messaging copy.
problem first every time. demo without the problem reads as a personality trait. demo with the problem reads as a fix.
specific tell: i scroll to the headline. if it tells me what's broken in 6 words or less i keep reading. if it tells me what's cool in 6 words or less i leave.
the products that converted me last year all named the bleeding before showing the bandage. the ones i forgot were the opposite.
@thenameisarian YES - show the bleeding before the bandaid - brilliant! Thanks for sharing that :)
This lens is so underrated. I'm a solo founder building in AI ad generation and the discipline of being able to say the problem in one sentence is what separates people who can sell from people who can only demo.
For MotionFy it took me 3 versions to get there:
V1: "AI-powered ad creative platform" (means nothing)
V2: "Generate ads in seconds" (still vague, what ads, for whom, why)
V3: "DTC beauty brands run the same 3 creatives until they burn out. We give them 20+ variations from one product photo."
The difference is V3 names the customer, names the actual pain (creative fatigue), and names the consequence (running the same thing until ROAS drops). Without all three, the problem statement is just a feature description in disguise.
The trap I see most often: founders describe what their product does instead of what their customer was failing to do before.
@elias_motionfy Oh yeah, well done - V3 is hands down the best of the 3! Now the Prospect understands exactly the problem your product solves for them. If you wanted to sharpen the outcome a little more, you could try:
"DTC beauty brands run the same 3 creatives until they burn out. We give them 20+ variations from one product photo, so they rotate ahead of fatigue instead of reacting to it." Now they can see it's a preventative measure as well (bonus). Have you launched this already?
@anna_ludwinowski "Ahead of fatigue instead of reacting to it" is a genuinely sharper version, the preventive frame reframes the whole purchase from "we need more creatives" to "we don't want to hit the wall in the first place." Different budget category, different conversation. Stealing this.
Not launched yet, Product Hunt on July 22. I've been in build-mode for 4 months and about to find out whether the positioning survives contact with real buyers. If you want to see how the pre-launch is going, the page is here: https://www.producthunt.com/products/motionfy?launch=motionfy
Thanks for the sharpening. It's rare to get a stranger to actually improve your copy in the wild.
Problem first, always. If I can't tell what gets less painful in the first few seconds, I scroll on no matter how clean the demo is.
What helped me was naming the pain I'd actually felt: as a founder doing investor research, I'd lose whole evenings stitching a company's funding, team and competitors together across a dozen tabs, never sure any of it was still current. So I built the thing I wished existed: one URL in, a sourced report out. The feature is 'turns a URL into a report.' The real problem is the hours and the doubt that go away.
And honestly, saying that out loud to other people is what finally made my own positioning click.
@mesut_temizkan Love it - we often see Founders building the thing they wish they'd had! You clearly understand the pain your product solves. Now make sure your messaging copy leans into that pain - countless hours wasted, confusion and potential mistakes, with low-quality output as a result.
Problem first, every time. A slick demo grabs my attention for about three seconds, but if I can’t immediately see what painful thing it fixes, I move on. The launches that stick with me are the ones where the problem is so clear I almost feel called out—then the product becomes the obvious answer. Naming the problem up front isn’t a tweak, it’s the whole opener. Without it, even the most polished UI feels like a solution in search of a problem.
@chess123app_admin Yes, exactly - you want to feel that "I just got called out" feeling! The ones you FEEL are the ones you remember, buy, and tell others about.
I start with "What problems can my program solve to remove a pain point for me" and then if others find it useful, they will upvote or star it wherever I post it (and I will probably continue to work on it a bit). I don't look for "how can I monetize it", I look for a truly beneficial product that is valuable in the sense that it works for me, and I don't have to use some product that comes close but never quite touches the problem properly. The money usually comes from how it eliminates time or issues in services/projects that I already do on the side.
@g023 If we lead with monetization, we can become blind to the problem we're trying to solve because it becomes only about the $$$. Find the problem, build the solution, find the Users, make the $$$.
SlimSnap
Problem first, always. For @SlimSnap it's this: you paste a screenshot into a coding agent and it edits the wrong element on a busy screen, so you redo the work. The fix is marking the exact element so the agent acts on that instead of its best guess. The sharpest way I've found to say it: the longest prompt you'll ever write is a screenshot.
@bickov Very cool product! While I like the tagline you mention (it is snappy), something that hits harder at the problem would be something like: "You point at one element. The agent edits a different one. You redo the work - every time, until you give up in frustration and fix it by hand. SlimSnap marks the element so the agent knows, not guesses." This shows the bleed and the bandage ;)
SlimSnap
@anna_ludwinowski This is much sharper, thank you. The escalation is what mine was missing, "redo it every time until you give up and fix it by hand" is the part that actually stings, and that's the real cost, not the single wrong edit. Stealing "shows the bleed and the bandage" as a test for any problem statement. Quick one: do you find the bleed has to come first, or can the bandage lead if it's vivid enough?