groundwork
Skip months of research. Get validated problems worth solving.
Groundwork is a hand-curated database of validated consumer problems—each backed by real behavioral signals and ready for builders to solve.
Designed to be deleted. Pick a problem, build it, move on.
Solve real customer problems.
Most startups fail because they solve problems that don’t exist.
You spend weeks building. Launch to crickets. Wonder what went wrong.
What if you could skip the guesswork?
Groundwork hands you validated problems before you write a single line of code.
🔍 Already Validated
Every problem is backed by real behavioral signals—Reddit threads, search trends, community patterns, and early market indicators.
📊 Evidence Included
See exactly why this problem matters: market size estimates, existing solutions, gaps in the market, and who’s already looking for answers.
⚡ Ready to Build
Stop doing months of research. Each problem card gives you everything you need to evaluate fit and start ideating and building confidently
How it works
1. Browse validated problems
Explore a curated collection of real consumer problems worth solving. Each one has been researched and hand verified.
2. Review the evidence
See the behavioral signals, existing solutions, market gaps, and target customer profiles that validate demand.
3. Start building
Pick a problem that fits your interests and jump into to execution with confidence.
See an example…
On-Demand Nighttime Sleep Training Support
What the behavior is
Parents of babies (4-18 months) are desperately seeking non-judgmental real-time , guidance in the middle of the night during sleep training. Parents today are paying for apps ($), courses ($$) and sleep consultants ( $$$) aimed to help their child sleep better, but few options offer on-demand personalized guidance and emotional support, as well as simple tools to complete sleep training.
Proof it's real
TikTok #sleeptraining (78k posts) - Top posts are about tips for sleep training, getting over the shame sleep training and vlogs showing “realistic” sleepless nights.
Google Trends: "sleep training help" spikes between 4:30am-5:30am EST consistently.
Reddit r/sleeptrain (152k members) - Recent posts include users finding significant value in using ChatGPT for emotional support and hyper-personalized recommendations.
Who's doing it
Primary user: First-time mothers, ages 28-38, middle to upper-middle class, college-educated, back at work or returning soon. High anxiety about "doing it right," exhausted from sleep deprivation, feeling isolated during overnight hours.
Market landscape
Macro trends:
Delayed parenthood = older, higher-income first-time parents with more disposable income
Erosion of extended family support (grandparents living farther away)
Increasing parental anxiety and information overload creating paralysis
Existing competitors:
Sleep trainer- Ferber method ($2.99) - provides timers and tracking tools specifically for sleep training, but guidance is unpersonalized.
Subscription based apps like Huckleberry and Napper, which aren’t specifically for sleep training, but aimed to help improve a baby’s sleep through predictions, and extensive logging and tracking of daytime sleep & feeds , which often in turn can create more anxiety.
Huckleberry Plus ($14.99) offers 24/7 guidance with a expert-vetted AI chat, but users report paying for Plus mainly to get personalized sleep recommendations suggesting their version of an AI chat is not adding any clear value for subscribers.
Taking Cara Babies (2.8M followers)($179 courses): Pre-recorded content, no real-time support
Local sleep consultants ($300-$800): Cost prohibitive for most parents.
Gap in market:Parents want sleep training guidance, tools, and emotional support in the moment without the overhead of daily tracking or the cost of a personal consultant.