Micro SaaS ideas with real demand: how to find them instead of guessing
Search "micro SaaS ideas" and you get the same list everyone else is reading: invoice tools, habit trackers, link-in-bio variants, another AI wrapper. The problem is not that these lists are wrong. It is that a published idea is a crowded idea by definition. This post gives you the method instead: how to source ideas with demand evidence that the lists have not touched. ## Why brainstormed ideas fail Brainstorming optimizes for what sounds clever in your head. Demand optimizes for what people already want. The overlap is small. Most failed micro SaaS products die from the same cause: the founder built something nobody was looking for, then discovered marketing cannot fix absent demand. Reverse the sequence. Find the demand first. Build second. ## The three evidence filters **Filter 1: People search for the problem.** Specific queries with real volume: "sync notion to google calendar", "invoice reminder for freelancers", "bulk edit shopify tags". Each is a person describing a pain in words. Keyword tools show you thousands of these, sorted by volume, with competition data attached. **Filter 2: People complain in public.** Forums, reviews of adjacent tools, community threads. The magic phrase is repetition: when the same complaint appears monthly for a year, the pain is durable. One-off complaints are noise. **Filter 3: People already pay nearby.** A niche paying $30 monthly for tool A will pay for tool B that fixes what A misses. A niche paying for nothing usually keeps