[Guest post by Paras, pluGGd.in reader. If you want to submit your posts, hop here]

For a startup, the most important thing is to find a pain-point. This pain-point refers to the real problems which people encounter in their daily life. Many a times, entrepreneurs mistake cool product or service for a serious startup. A startup can only be serious and successful when it solves a real problem.

But, isn’t finding a problem hard? The answer is no. I have compiled a list of resources and tips below to help you find real problems:

• Real-time Conversations.
  • Twistori: A twitter mashup which shows in real-time what people hate, wish and love. This can be an interesting way to listen to people and get ideas about their pains.
  • Summize: It lets you search twitter conversations in real-time and within a geographically defined area.
• Surveys.
  • Google Alerts: Setup an alert for the term ’survey’ or its variations. You may also want to setup alerts for combinations such as ‘india survey’, ‘hr survey’, etc. Surveys usually reveal people’s pains. So, make sure you get updated about them.
  • Search Google for terms such as ‘survey results‘ or variations of it.
• Reports.
  • Free-reports.com: Loaded with advertisements but worth a try.
  • AllAboutMarketResearch: Cluttered website but has some good pointers.
• Questions and Answers.
  • Yahoo Answers: If properly used, it can reveal a lot of problems people are facing. What more, looking at people’s answers, you can mostly

Any more ideas on how to find problems which startups could solve? How do you do your research on this topic?

PS: Original post can be found here.

Tags: Entrepreneurship, startups