The 7 Surprising Signals That Predict Great Startup Ideas
The 7 Surprising Signals That Predict Great Startup Ideas
Aron Meystedt
December 12, 2025
Aron here with ValidatorAI.com
👬 Let’s connect on LinkedIn!
Before we dive into the data from our Startup Idea Generator:
Only 9% of Validator AI members take the next step to validate.
Let’s mockup a landing page and start showing everyone your idea!
Want to see your idea come alive in minutes?
Describe your idea to Base44 and their AI will generate a landing page and mockups instantly. It’s FREE to try!
👉 Try Base44
🤖 Use this prompt at Base44 (replace the info in brackets with your own idea) 👇
I am proving demand for a new startup. My startup idea is [in 2 sentences, write your startup idea here] and the target audience is [in 1 sentence, describe the audience]. This helps solve the problem of [in 1 sentence, write the problem you are solving here].
Please create a landing page with visual appeal and images that match this market we are entering. My goal is to collect emails of interested customers, so I can further validate demand. Prominently place an email capture form on the site, so we can reach out to interested people and continue the conversation.
👀 Have You Moved Your Idea Forward? We Want to Hear About it!
Our members would love to know what worked for you.
What was your idea? What steps did you take? What went wrong? What went well? What helped you make the most progress?
🤩 Please reply to this email and we’d love to feature your story next week.
Send me a quick paragraph or two about you and what you’re working on.
We’d love to hear what helped you make progress!
Why Most Startup Ideas Fail Before They Begin
ValidatorAI Dataset Analysis, Part 2
Welcome back.
Today we’re diving into the deeper psychological patterns we found in 2,621 submissions via our Startup Idea Generator.
These insights should change how you think about ideas.
Let’s get into it.
Problem Length vs Idea Quality
Longer problem descriptions → better ideas
Problem Length vs Idea Quality
(words vs composite score)
(visual correlation)
short ████░░░░░░░░░░░ weak ideas
medium ████████░░░░░░ better ideas
long ██████████████ strongest ideas
Short problems (“X is hard for people”) = weak ideas.
Long, detailed descriptions = founders who understand the customer.
This was one of the strongest correlations in the entire dataset.
If you can write 4–6 sentences about the problem, you’re already ahead of most founders.
Emotional Pain Index
The emotional words founders use when describing problems
struggling ████ (high)
frustrating █████ (very high)
confusing ██
expensive ██
stressful ██
inefficient ███
difficulty ██
problem ███████████████ (generic, most common)
Pain = opportunity.
The best ideas originate from a real emotional struggle, and usually not from a curious thought experiment. If you can clearly describe the exact pain point, you’re way ahead.
The best ideas used clear descriptors like ‘struggling’ and ‘frustrating’ as seen above. Be specific when describing the problem you aim to solve.
Solution Bias Detector
Most founders describe solutions, not problems
Solution-biased ██████████████████
Real problems ████████████████████████████████
A “solution-biased problem” sounds like:
“There should be an app that…”
“AI should help with…”
This is a huge weakness.
Strong founders describe problems in human terms, not product terms.
Starting with just an idea like, “wouldn’t it be cool if a platform did XYZ” is a tough place to start from.
❗❗ This can throw you into a dangerous loop of constantly iterating an idea, which I describe in this YouTube video:
📺 The Right vs. Wrong Way to Launch a Startup (1900 views)
Dream vs Reality Gap
Founders choose industries they can’t yet compete in
Aspirational Ideas (AI/SaaS/etc.) ████████████████████████████
Weak Resource Fit ██████████
Thousands of founders submitted ideas in:
AI
SaaS
Marketplaces
Automation
But the vast majority had no relevant skills or network.
This doesn’t mean “don’t dream.”
It means:
“Dream where you have leverage.”
🙏 Before we continue → I need your feedback, please!
We are working on launching a continual feed of startup data and stats.
Internal data + external data for an up to the minute snapshot of the startup world.
Think of it as a Bloomberg-style feed of data and analysis and trends.
Would this be interesting and helpful? 👇
Would you like a live data feed of the startup world?CHOOSE ONE |
Customer Proximity Score
Do founders have actual access to the customers they want to serve?
Close to Customer ███
Far from Customer ████████████████████████████████████████
Most founders are building for customers they can’t reach.
Ideas improve dramatically when:
you know the customer
you’ve worked with the customer
you can message the customer tomorrow
Closeness = clarity.
As stated earlier, pick an idea where you can easily (and repeatedly) reach the target customer.
Why?
Because you’ll be talking with them, A LOT, throughout your journey… so you better be able to quickly reach them.
Market Imagination Gap
Who founders rarely build for, despite massive market size
parents ████████ 44
teachers ██ 21
seniors ██ 15
healthcare workers ██ 10
immigrants █ 7
tradespeople 0
blue-collar 0
Look at how few ideas target these groups.
These are enormous markets.
Your biggest opportunities often live in the groups everyone else ignores.
Build-What-You-Are vs Build-What-You-Want
Ideas aligned with your identity score much higher
Build What You Are ██
Build What You Want ████████████████████████████████
Founders who build in their own domain:
write clearer problems
identify customers more accurately
understand workflows
validate faster
spend less money
Ideas built from identity outperform ideas built from imagination.
As you can see, above, very few people are building ideas that are close to them.
📈 The Idea Quality Predictor. Here’s the secret!
You’ve figured it out by now…
The highest-scoring ideas share three traits.
Across 2,621 submissions, the top ideas had:
1. A painfully specific problem
Long, emotional, concrete.
2. A narrow and reachable customer
A group the founder could talk to today and continually reach.
3. A founder with real advantage
Domain experience, a network, or technical skill.
If you’re missing any of these, your idea becomes harder.
If you have all three, everything becomes easier.
If you want to FINALLY start moving forward:
Mockup your idea at Base44 and start showing everyone! 👇👇
Describe your idea to Base44 and their AI will generate a landing page and mockups instantly. It’s FREE to try!
🤖 Use this prompt at Base44 (replace the info in brackets with your own idea) 👇
I am proving demand for a new startup. My startup idea is [in 2 sentences, write your startup idea here] and the target audience is [in 1 sentence, describe the audience]. This helps solve the problem of [in 1 sentence, write the problem you are solving here].
Please create a landing page with visual appeal and images that match this market we are entering. My goal is to collect emails of interested customers, so I can further validate demand. Prominently place an email capture form on the site, so we can reach out to interested people and continue the conversation.
See you next week.
🙏 Please answer the survey in the middle of this email, if you could.
Your input is helpful!
💡 And if you need a startup idea, use our Startup Idea Generator. It’s free and takes 15 seconds. Be sure to lean into what your personal strengths are, when filling out the form.
Good luck out there. Email me if you need someone to talk to about your idea.
Aron Meystedt
Chief Data Nerd at ValidatorAI.com
👬 Let’s connect on LinkedIn!
Follow along on social media below 👇👇
