Spent the last few weeks going through IndieHackers "shutting down" posts, dead Product Hunt launches, and abandoned GitHub repos to find patterns in why solo-built SaaS products die.

The #1 killer wasn't marketing, pricing, or even competition. It was this:

Founders validated the solution, not the pain.

They'd see someone complain once in a Reddit thread, get excited, and spend 8 weeks building. Then launch to silence — because one complaint isn't a market, it's a data point.

The pattern that actually works, pulled from the ~12% of launches that hit $1k MRR in under 90 days:

1. They found the SAME pain point mentioned by 15+ different people across 3+ communities before writing a line of code

2. They asked "how are you solving this today?" — if the answer was a messy spreadsheet or a $200/mo enterprise tool nobody likes, that's a green light

3. They pre-sold access (even a $9 waitlist) before building anything

4. They shipped the ugliest possible v1 in under 2 weeks

The uncomfortable truth: most people skip step 1-3 because research feels like stalling and building feels like progress. It's the opposite — building on an unvalidated pain point is the actual stall, it just takes 3 months to find out.

If you're sitting on an idea right now, the fastest gut-check: search it verbatim on Reddit + X + IndieHackers. If you can't find at least 10 people describing the exact pain in the last 6 months, it's not validated yet — it's a hunch.

Happy to swap notes with anyone else digging into idea validation — what's the worst "built it and nobody came" story you've got?