How solving your own problem can unlock a profitable boring business?

Solve your own problems...

👋 Hi and welcome to today’s edition of Venture Radar — where we uncover real businesses making real money, and break down how they do it.

Most people think they need to “find a niche” or “come up with a business idea.” But often, the best businesses aren’t found. They’re felt. They’re born out of frustration. Repetition. That one annoying thing you wish someone else would fix.

If you're dealing with it, there’s a good chance hundreds maybe thousands of others are too. That’s your signal.

The most underrated way to start a boring business is to solve your own headache first, then turn that solution into something repeatable. Not sexy. Not disruptive. Just something that works and can be sold.

Let’s break it down.

Step 1: notice what you fix for yourself

Most people walk right past their own pain points. You normalize it. You build workarounds. But that friction is often your opportunity.

Ask yourself:

• What do you keep doing manually every week?

• What do people at work always ask you to fix?

• What’s the spreadsheet, checklist, or doc you built because everything else sucked?

That’s how real products start. Examples:

• The founder of Docparser built it to extract data from PDFs because no other tools worked for his use case.

• Benchling started as a biotech research student tool built by researchers for researchers.

• Jobber, a now-huge SaaS for home service businesses, was built by someone watching their family business struggle with admin and scheduling.

These didn’t start with a market map. They started with, “I need this to work better.”

Step 2: fix it manually first

Don’t jump to code. Don’t launch a landing page. Just solve the problem for yourself first, really well.

• Build a Notion dashboard

• Create an automation with Zapier

• Make a checklist or a smart template

• Organize a process that used to be chaotic

Use it in real life. Break it. Fix it. Make it smoother. That hands-on learning will teach you more than any mentor or course ever could.

Step 3: find people like you and offer it

This is where things shift. Once your system solves your own problem reliably, go find people who are 1 step behind you people who haven’t solved it yet.

• Join forums, Discords, or Facebook groups

• Answer Reddit questions (don’t sell, just help)

• DM people with the same job role and ask if they’ve ever had the same issue

• Share a screenshot of how you fixed it, and offer to share the template or workflow

You don’t need to “sell” aggressively. You just need to show that this thing helped you and it might help them too.

If 3 people say “thank you” and 2 of them offer to pay? That’s your green light.

Step 4: turn the fix into a product or service

At this point, you’ve got:

• A real problem

• A working solution

• Some early validation

Now package it:

• Turn your Notion doc into a paid template

• Turn your Zapier flow into a downloadable automation

• Turn your SOPs into a $99 kit

• Turn your system into a monthly “done-for-you” service

Keep it simple. Don’t overbuild. Your first version should be easy to explain in one sentence, and deliverable in a day.

Step 5: refine based on real use, not guesses

You’ll get feedback. Some of it will sting. Some of it will clarify what really matters. The beauty is: you’re still the target customer, so you’ll instinctively know what’s noise and what’s signal.

Fix the parts that slow people down. Make it easier to use. Add the missing step someone forgot to tell you they needed.

Over time, you go from:

• Solving it for yourself

• Solving it for 10 people

• Solving it for 100
  And suddenly…

• You’ve got a boring business that scales quietly

What makes this path so powerful?

• You know the problem better than anyone else

• You don’t need to validate it with a spreadsheet your own life is the use case

• You’ll never run out of motivation, because you needed the solution too

• You’ll speak your customer’s language perfectly, because you are your customer

This is not a fast path. It’s not a flashy one. But it’s the most honest, sustainable, and repeatable way to build something real especially in boring niches that most people overlook.

If you're sitting at a desk job right now frustrated by how something works, pay attention. That friction might be the foundation of your next business.
And if you fix it well enough for yourself, others will happily pay you to fix it for them too.

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