The Real SaaS Idea Isn’t in the Post, It’s in the Comments

How a Designer’s Side Project Revealed a $19/Month Goldmine

Generated by Author with Gemini AI

Most people scroll past a feel-good Reddit post and move on. But sometimes, the most profitable business ideas aren’t in the original post—they’re hiding in the quiet desperation of the comments.

This is the story of how to find one. It’s a real-world example of listening to what a market needs, not just what one person has built. I dig through online forums for a living, and this pattern is a goldmine 💡. The key is to look past the surface-level praise and identify the underlying problem that no one is solving yet.

A packaging engineer, excited about their work, shared a tool they built to track packaging trends from major CPG brands. They posted it in the r/Packaging subreddit (link):

“I love packaging design and engineering so much that I have started building a tool which tracks current in market packaging trends. I would love to share my journey and progression on here.”

The community was supportive. But the real opportunity wasn’t what the creator built. It was what the community wished they had built.

The Problem Hiding in Plain Sight

The original poster’s tool was a library of designs from massive companies like L’Oreal and Maybelline. This seems logical—follow the leaders, right?

Wrong. The professional designers in the thread gently pointed out a fatal flaw. One comment nailed it:

I work in beauty and I wouldn’t say those in the category are exactly indicative of trends, but yes definitely some of the biggest brands. I feel like there are a lot more examples of trends with innovative delivery systems like fun applicators… The Loreals and Maybellines are typically very conservative and slow to adopt trends.

This is a critical insight. Professionals don’t want to see what the biggest, slowest-moving corporations are doing. They need inspiration from the small, innovative brands that are setting future trends. The OP’s tool showed the past; designers need to see the future.

Then, another comment revealed their current, painful solution:

Just what I need. I have loads of stuff on Pinterest with different types of packaging design.

This isn’t praise; it’s a cry for help. “I have loads of stuff on Pinterest” is professional code for “I have a messy, unorganized folder of 1,000 images with no way to sort or filter them effectively.”

According to the “Jobs to be Done” framework, customers “hire” products to do a job. Pinterest is hired for collection, but it fails miserably at the job of professional retrieval. When a designer is on a deadline, they can’t afford to sift through a digital junk drawer.

The problem is crystal clear: Designers need a way to find truly innovative packaging examples, and their current tools are a disorganized mess.