Startup Data: Founder Blind Spots. What we all Need Help With!

Aron Meystedt
December 01, 2025

Aron here with ValidatorAI.com | 🤵 Let’s connect on LinkedIn!

Before we start…
We’ve partnered with Base44, where you can bring your idea to life, for FREE, in seconds.

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📊 IDEA FUTURES INDEX

24HR MOVERS:

manufacturing ██░░░░░░░░░░░ +35%🔥

edtech █░░░░░░░░░░░░ +8%

saas (software as a service) ███████████░░ -19%❄️

platforms ██████████░░░ -26%❄️

Manufacturing is the outlier: submissions are up 35% week-over-week.
The biggest collapses are e-commerce (‑44%) and consulting/services (‑34%), even as “vertical SaaS” searches jump 31% on Google Trends.
Edtech quietly ticks up (8%) against the broader tech pullback.

🔬 VALIDATION REALITY CHECK (By Base44)

This week's hard truth:

Of the 1000+ ideas submitted in the last 7 days:

89.2% still have no MVP
10.8% have progressed to MVP stage
45.8% still need a landing page

👉 90% of founders never take that first step. If you want to move forward, head to Base44 and build your landing page for FREE in seconds.

1. 59% of founders are building ideas that are too broad to validate.

“Small businesses,” “anyone,” and “people who need help with…” showed up in over half the submissions.
Narrow ideas consistently scored 10–15 points higher.

2. 71% of founders don’t know who their real customer is.

Most founders describe users, not buyers.
Only 29% clearly stated the buyer, and those scored the highest.

🤖 Val’s Advice: If you know who will pay, your idea improves instantly.

3. The most common fix Val gave: “Talk to 10–15 real customers.”

This advice appeared hundreds of times.
Why? Because most people are relying on major assumptions about demand, pricing, customer needs.

If you haven’t talked to 10 people yet, please get out there and start the conversations!

4. 1 in 3 founders misunderstand their competition.

The most common mistake:

Founders think they’re competing with “no one.”
Val immediately lists 3–5 competitors they didn’t know about.
Most UVPs (Unique Value Propositions) are just “AI + convenience,” which already exists in many markets.

🤖 Val’s Advice: Pick a niche the incumbents have ignored.

5. Customer Objection #1: “Is this worth the price?”

Across every simulated customer interview, the strongest objections were about:

price
ROI
value clarity
what they get exactly

Followed by:

trust
time
complexity
safety

🤖 Val’s Advice: People don’t fear AI. They fear wasting money on the wrong thing.

6. “AI-powered _____” with no workflow attached.

The pattern:

“AI assistant for X”
“AI platform for Y”
“AI that helps you do Z faster”

But customers buy workflows, not “AI.”
The top-scoring ideas clearly defined one painful job-to-be-done.

🤖 Val’s Advice: Don’t sell AI. Sell an outcome.

7. The #1 execution gap: founders build too much, too early.

24% of founders proposed a:

platform
marketplace
app
multi-sided system

…before validating a single user.

🤖 Val’s Advice:

“Build one workflow.”
“Do the service manually.”
“Pilot with 5–10 people.”
“Charge early.”

8. UVP (Unique Value Proposition) is unclear in 68% of ideas.

The most common Val correction:

🤖 “Rewrite your idea in one sentence: who it’s for, what problem it solves, and the outcome they get.”

If your idea can’t be summarized in one crisp sentence, it’s not sharp enough.

9. Monetization is weak in 54% of submissions.

Patterns seen in the dataset:

No price
No business model
No willingness-to-pay testing
Wrong person being charged
Subscription chosen by default
Expensive problem with a cheap solution

The AI’s most common fix:

🤖 “Put a price on it today and see who pushes back.”

10. When Val simulates customer interviews, customers consistently want the same 5 things:

Across hundreds of simulated conversations, customers repeatedly asked for:

(1) clearer outcomes
(2) less complexity
(3) faster results
(4) guarantees or trust markers
(5) someone (or something) to “just do it for me”

🤖 Val’s Advice: Your real differentiator is speed, clarity, and confidence, not features.

ONE THING TO DO TODAY

Pick one specific customer niche and talk to 3 real people in it today.

Ask:

“What’s the hardest part?”
“How do you solve it now?”
“What would you pay to fix it permanently?”

🤖: Collect 3 quotes → you will instantly be ahead of ~70% of founders from this week.

That's it for today. Scroll down to see three videos I made to help you with your idea 👇

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