About This Tool

I built IdeaScraper because I was tired of endlessly scrolling through forums looking for business opportunities. As someone constantly hunting for problems to solve, I found myself spending hours manually searching through discussions, trying to spot patterns and validate market demand.

The problem was simple: there are millions of conversations happening online where people express frustrations, ask for solutions, and discuss problems they'd pay to solve. But finding these needles in the haystack was incredibly time-consuming.

What This Tool Does

IdeaScraper automatically scans online discussions and identifies posts that contain business opportunities. Instead of me having to read through hundreds of posts manually, the system does the heavy lifting and surfaces the most promising conversations.

The tool focuses on finding specific types of language that typically indicate business opportunities:

• Problem statements - "Why doesn't X exist?", "I need an app that...", "Someone should build..."
• Pain points - "This is so frustrating", "I hate having to...", "Why is this so complicated?"
• Willingness to pay - "I would pay for...", "How much would this cost?", "Anyone know a service that..."
• Solution seeking - "Looking for alternatives to...", "Better solution for...", "Recommendations for..."

How the Scoring Works

Each discussion gets a score from 0-100 based on several factors. I designed this scoring system to help me quickly identify which opportunities are worth my time investigating further.

Engagement (40% of score) - Posts with high upvotes and active comment threads indicate that many people share this problem. If a post has 200+ upvotes and 50+ comments, that's a strong signal of market demand.

Discussion quality (25% of score) - The system analyzes comments to determine if people are genuinely discussing solutions, sharing similar experiences, or expressing willingness to pay for alternatives.

Recency (20% of score) - Newer problems often represent better opportunities than old complaints. The tool gives higher scores to recent posts while still capturing timeless issues.

Keyword density (15% of score) - Posts that contain multiple opportunity indicators get bonus points. A post saying "I would pay for an app that does X because the current solutions are frustrating" hits multiple triggers.

Understanding the Scores

80-100: High Priority - These are discussions I investigate immediately. Usually indicates a validated problem with clear demand signals and engaged community discussion.

60-79: Worth Investigating - Good opportunities that merit deeper research. Often these need additional validation but show promising signs.

40-59: Maybe Later - Interesting problems but either low engagement or unclear market signals. I bookmark these for future reference.

0-39: Skip - Usually complaints without constructive discussion or problems too niche/personal to represent broader opportunities.

How I Use This

My typical workflow is simple: I search for terms related to industries I'm interested in, then sort by score to see the highest-potential opportunities first. Instead of spending hours scrolling, I can quickly scan the top-scored results and focus my research time on the most promising discussions.

I particularly look for patterns - when similar problems appear across different communities or time periods, that's usually a strong indicator of a real market need.

The summary feature helps me quickly understand what each discussion is about without having to read through dozens of comments. It extracts the key problems, proposed solutions, and community sentiment.

What Makes a Good Opportunity

Through using this tool, I've learned that the best opportunities usually have several characteristics:

• Multiple people expressing the same frustration
• Discussion of current solutions and their shortcomings
• Evidence that people have tried to solve this themselves
• Comments indicating willingness to pay for a better solution
• Problems that affect a definable group of people (not just one individual's unique situation)

This tool doesn't replace the need for proper market research and validation, but it significantly speeds up the initial opportunity identification process. Instead of hunting through endless forums, I can focus my time on evaluating and validating the opportunities the system has already identified.