10,000 Customer Interviews. Zero Small Talk.

Everyone says the same thing when you tell them you want to start a business:

“Go talk to your customers.”

It’s great advice in theory.
In practice, it’s exhausting.

You chase strangers on LinkedIn who never reply.
You post in Slack groups and get ghosted.
You interview five people and convince yourself you’ve done “research.”

But here’s the truth: the best founders aren’t doing more customer interviews, they’re just listening differently.

They’ve figured out how to skip the awkward Zoom calls, skip the “I’ll let you know if I think of anything” follow-ups, and jump straight to hearing what thousands of potential customers are already yelling into the void.

That’s where our partner GummySearch comes in.

The Modern Founder’s Cheat Code

GummySearch turns Reddit into your customer research team.

You type in your niche, let’s say freelance designers or crypto investors or first-time parents and suddenly, you’re staring at hundreds of real conversations where people say things like:

“I wish there was a tool that did X…”
“Every [insert product] I’ve tried is trash.”
“Does anyone else struggle with…?”

You’re not just seeing complaints. You’re seeing demand.
In their own words.
At scale.

That’s not market research.
That’s product-market clairvoyance.

Why This Works (And Why You’re Probably Overcomplicating It)

When most people brainstorm startup ideas, they make the same mistake:

They start with what they think is interesting instead of what people actually need.

That’s why 9 out of 10 startups die.
They build clever stuff nobody asked for.

But the good news?
The internet is already one giant focus group that never stops talking.

There are thousands of people explaining their problems in public, every single day.
They’re not hiding them. They’re ranting about them.

The problem isn’t finding what people want.
It’s filtering out the noise.

GummySearch does that automatically. It finds the 10k–100k member subreddits (the ones big enough to matter but small enough to still be human), surfaces the posts that scream pain or frustration, and organizes them by category:

• Pain & Anger → People ranting about what’s broken.

• Advice Requests → People begging for solutions.

• Solution Requests → People asking if tools already exist.

You don’t have to guess anymore. You can literally see the problems people want fixed and how often they repeat.

That repetition is gold.
If you see the same complaint 12 times in different threads, that’s not a coincidence. That’s a pattern. That’s the start of a business.

The 100x Interview Effect

A traditional founder does 10 interviews and thinks they’ve done “validation.”
A smart founder runs GummySearch and gets the same insights from 10,000 posts.

They see how people describe the pain, what language they use, what hacks they’ve tried, and what they’re comparing it to.

That’s the kind of insight you usually get after you’ve spent 6 months building something and launching it to crickets.

Except here, you get it before you write a single line of code.

It’s like running your startup idea through a time machine and getting customer feedback before you build.

You’re not building blind anymore, you’re building backwards from evidence.

Example: How This Actually Plays Out

Let’s say you’re interested in the “creator” niche.

You type in subreddits like r/creators, r/youtubers, r/instagram, r/sidehustle, r/podcasting.
GummySearch pulls up threads like:

“I wish there was a tool that helped me track which brands actually pay creators.”
“Does anyone else hate how affiliate links always break after 30 days?”
“I’ve tried three different sponsorship platforms, all of them suck.”

You read 20 of those and start noticing a pattern: creators don’t trust existing sponsorship tools because they lack transparency and payment tracking.

That’s not one person’s complaint. That’s market validation in the wild.

Now imagine doing the same for other niches, parenting, fitness, home improvement, B2B SaaS.
Every corner of the internet has unmet needs just sitting there, waiting for you to notice.

That’s what GummySearch does.
It makes you the kind of founder who sees opportunity where everyone else sees noise.

Why “Talking to Customers” Is Overrated

Let’s be real: the average “customer interview” is awkward.

You get polite answers. You get surface-level insights. You get what people say they want, not what they actually do or feel.

But when people vent online?
That’s when you get the truth.

They’re not trying to impress you.
They’re not sugarcoating.
They’re ranting at 2 AM, unfiltered.

That’s the gold. That’s the stuff that reveals pain, emotion, and intent, the three things that make people buy.

And GummySearch organizes all of that into something usable.

You’re not guessing what the world needs. You’re listening to what the world is literally begging for.

The Playbook

Here’s how you can try this today in 15 minutes:

1. Pick your niche.
   Something you actually care about or have context in — fitness, freelancing, crypto, parenting, AI, design, whatever.

2. Load up GummySearch.
   Add 5–10 subreddits in that niche.

3. Click “Pain & Anger.”
   Read through a few posts and highlight any that repeat.

4. Check “Advice Requests.”
   Look for questions like “What’s the best tool for…?” or “How do you manage…?”

5. Find repeats.
   When the same complaint shows up again and again, that’s a signal.

6. Test fast.
   Spin up a quick landing page or post in the subreddit asking, “Would anyone use a tool that solved X?”
   You’ll get validation faster than any survey could deliver.

This Isn’t Guesswork Anymore

There are two kinds of founders:

• The ones who think they know what people want.

• And the ones who know because they listen first.

The first group wastes months chasing ideas that sound smart.
The second group uses tools like GummySearch to find ideas that are smart because they start from evidence.

This is how you skip the “startup graveyard” phase and go straight to building something people actually care about.

You don’t need to be a genius. You just need to be willing to pay attention.

Final Thought

If you’ve ever felt stuck staring at a blank doc, wondering what to build next, stop trying to “come up with” ideas.

Start uncovering them.

Because every day, thousands of people are posting clues online. They’re revealing unmet needs, broken systems, and unsolved pains.

You don’t need a lightbulb moment. You need a flashlight.

That’s what GummySearch is, the flashlight that reveals what’s hiding in plain sight.

👉 Try GummySearch for free
👉 Or skip the digging and check out 5,500+ ideas we’ve already logged in NTE Pro

Your next idea isn’t waiting to be invented.
It’s already being discussed.
You just haven’t listened yet.