Reddit Product Viability Research

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when you need to:

• Validate product ideas before investing development time
• Assess market demand through real user conversations
• Identify pain points and severity across target segments
• Evaluate willingness to pay based on user discussions
• Analyze competitor saturation and gaps in solutions
• Discover feature requests and unmet needs
• Monitor product-market fit signals over time
• Research SaaS alternative opportunities (like SAP Concur, Ariba alternatives)

Core Capabilities

Product Viability Validation Framework

Systematically evaluate four critical dimensions:

1. Real Demand Signals

   • Volume of discussions about the problem
   • Frequency of complaints and pain points
   • Emotional intensity in user posts
   • Problem persistence over time

2. Pain Severity Assessment

   • Impact on users' work/life
   • Workarounds currently being used
   • Time/money currently wasted
   • Urgency of need for solution

3. Willingness to Pay

   • Current spending on alternatives
   • Budget discussions and constraints
   • "Shut up and take my money" signals
   • Pricing tolerance indicators

4. Competitor Saturation

   • Existing solutions mentioned
   • User satisfaction with alternatives
   • Gap analysis (unfulfilled needs)
   • Market positioning opportunities

Technical Implementation

• Reddit API + Firecrawl - Scrape subreddits, threads, comments
• Supabase Storage - Store posts with deduplication
• NLP Analysis - Sentiment, entity extraction, topic modeling
• Superset Dashboards - Visualize trends and insights
• Notion Integration - Track validation findings
• Scheduled Monitoring - Daily/weekly trend analysis

Prerequisites

Required Access

• Reddit API key (free tier: 100 requests/minute)
• Firecrawl API key (self-hosted or paid)
• Supabase project with pgvector
• Superset instance for visualization

Optional Integrations

• OpenAI API for GPT-4 analysis
• Perplexity API for research enhancement
• Notion for findings documentation

Python Dependencies

praw  # Reddit API wrapper
firecrawl-py
supabase-py
pandas
numpy
transformers  # For sentiment analysis

Implementation Patterns

Product Validation Prompt Template

✅ Product Viability — Reddit Insight Prompt

Goal: Validate real demand, pain severity, willingness to pay, and competitor 
saturation for [PRODUCT_IDEA].

Scrape and analyze Reddit for real user signals about the following product idea:

**Product Idea:** [Your product concept]

**Target Subreddits:**
- r/[relevant_sub1]
- r/[relevant_sub2]
- r/[relevant_sub3]

**Analysis Timeframe:** Past [6/12/24] months

**Key Questions to Answer:**

1. **Real Demand:**
   - How many users discuss this problem?
   - How often does it come up?
   - What triggers discussions about it?
   - Is the problem persistent or seasonal?

2. **Pain Severity:**
   - What impact does the problem have?
   - What workarounds are users trying?
   - How much time/money is being wasted?
   - What's the urgency level?

3. **Willingness to Pay:**
   - What are users currently spending on alternatives?
   - What's their budget range?
   - Are there "shut up and take my money" signals?
   - What pricing would be acceptable?

4. **Competitor Saturation:**
   - Which solutions are mentioned?
   - What are users' complaints about alternatives?
   - What gaps exist in current solutions?
   - Where's the market positioning opportunity?

**Output Format:**
- Quantitative metrics (post volume, sentiment scores)
- Qualitative insights (user quotes, pain points)
- Competitor analysis matrix
- Recommended next steps
- Risk factors and red flags

Reddit Scraping Script

# reddit_viability_scraper.py
import praw
from firecrawl import FirecrawlApp
from supabase import create_client
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
import pandas as pd
from transformers import pipeline

class RedditViabilityAnalyzer:
    def __init__(self, supabase_url, supabase_key, reddit_client_id, reddit_secret):
        # Initialize Reddit client
        self.reddit = praw.Reddit(
            client_id=reddit_client_id,
            client_secret=reddit_secret,
            user_agent='ProductViabilityBot/1.0'
        )
        
        # Initialize Supabase
        self.supabase = create_client(supabase_url, supabase_key)
        
        # Initialize sentiment analyzer
        self.sentiment_analyzer = pipeline("sentiment-analysis")
    
    def scrape_subreddit(self, subreddit_name, keywords, timeframe_months=6):
        """
        Scrape subreddit for product validation signals
        """
        subreddit = self.reddit.subreddit(subreddit_name)
        posts = []
        
        # Calculate timeframe
        cutoff_date = datetime.now() - timedelta(days=timeframe_months * 30)
        
        # Search for keywords
        for keyword in keywords:
            results = subreddit.search(
                keyword,
                sort='relevance',
                time_filter='year',
                limit=100
            )
            
            for post in results:
                if datetime.fromtimestamp(post.created_utc) >= cutoff_date:
                    # Extract post data
                    post_data = {
                        'id': post.id,
                        'title': post.title,
                        'text': post.selftext,
                        'score': post.score,
                        'num_comments': post.num_comments,
                        'created_utc': post.created_utc,
                        'url': post.url,
                        'subreddit': subreddit_name,
                        'keyword': keyword,
                        'scraped_at': datetime.now().isoformat()
                    }
                    
                    # Get top comments
                    post.comments.replace_more(limit=0)
                    comments = []
                    for comment in post.comments.list()[:10]:  # Top 10 comments
                        comments.append({
                            'text': comment.body,
                            'score': comment.score,
                            'created_utc': comment.created_utc
                        })
                    
                    post_data['comments'] = comments
                    posts.append(post_data)
        
        return posts
    
    def analyze_demand_signals(self, posts):
        """
        Analyze volume, frequency, and intensity of demand signals
        """
        df = pd.DataFrame(posts)
        
        analysis = {
            'total_posts': len(df),
            'avg_score': df['score'].mean(),
            'avg_comments': df['num_comments'].mean(),
            'total_engagement': df['score'].sum() + df['num_comments'].sum(),
            'posts_per_month': len(df) / 6,  # Assuming 6 month timeframe
            'top_posts': df.nlargest(5, 'score')[['title', 'score', 'url']].to_dict('records')
        }
        
        return analysis
    
    def analyze_pain_severity(self, posts):
        """
        Analyze pain points and their severity
        """
        pain_indicators = [
            'frustrated', 'annoying', 'waste of time', 'terrible',
            'awful', 'nightmare', 'ridiculous', 'broken', 'useless'
        ]
        
        high_pain_posts = []
        for post in posts:
            text = f"{post['title']} {post['text']}".lower()
            pain_score = sum(1 for indicator in pain_indicators if indicator in text)
            
            if pain_score > 0:
                high_pain_posts.append({
                    'title': post['title'],
                    'pain_score': pain_score,
                    'score': post['score'],
                    'url': post['url']
                })
        
        high_pain_posts.sort(key=lambda x: x['pain_score'], reverse=True)
        
        return {
            'high_pain_posts_count': len(high_pain_posts),
            'avg_pain_score': sum(p['pain_score'] for p in high_pain_posts) / len(high_pain_posts) if high_pain_posts else 0,
            'top_pain_posts': high_pain_posts[:10]
        }
    
    def analyze_willingness_to_pay(self, posts):
        """
        Analyze pricing discussions and budget indicators
        """
        price_keywords = [
            'price', 'cost', 'expensive', 'cheap', 'free', 'subscription',
            'monthly', 'yearly', 'budget', 'afford', 'worth', 'pay'
        ]
        
        pricing_posts = []
        for post in posts:
            text = f"{post['title']} {post['text']}".lower()
            if any(keyword in text for keyword in price_keywords):
                pricing_posts.append({
                    'title': post['title'],
                    'text': post['text'],
                    'url': post['url'],
                    'score': post['score']
                })
        
        return {
            'pricing_discussion_count': len(pricing_posts),
            'pricing_posts': pricing_posts[:10]
        }
    
    def analyze_competitor_saturation(self, posts):
        """
        Identify competitors and satisfaction levels
        """
        # This would need to be customized per use case
        competitors = {}
        
        for post in posts:
            text = f"{post['title']} {post['text']}".lower()
            
            # Extract competitor mentions (simplified)
            # In practice, use NER or custom extraction
            for comment in post.get('comments', []):
                # Analyze satisfaction with mentioned tools
                sentiment = self.sentiment_analyzer(comment['text'][:512])[0]
                
                # Track competitor mentions and sentiment
                # (Simplified - would need more sophisticated NER)
        
        return competitors
    
    def store_in_supabase(self, posts, analysis):
        """
        Store posts and analysis in Supabase
        """
        # Store raw posts
        for post in posts:
            self.supabase.table('reddit_posts').upsert({
                'post_id': post['id'],
                'title': post['title'],
                'text': post['text'],
                'score': post['score'],
                'num_comments': post['num_comments'],
                'created_at': datetime.fromtimestamp(post['created_utc']).isoformat(),
                'url': post['url'],
                'subreddit': post['subreddit'],
                'keyword': post['keyword'],
                'scraped_at': post['scraped_at']
            }).execute()
        
        # Store analysis summary
        self.supabase.table('viability_analysis').insert({
            'analyzed_at': datetime.now().isoformat(),
            'demand_signals': analysis['demand'],
            'pain_severity': analysis['pain'],
            'pricing_insights': analysis['pricing'],
            'competitor_analysis': analysis['competitors']
        }).execute()
    
    def generate_report(self, analysis):
        """
        Generate human-readable viability report
        """
        report = f"""
# Product Viability Analysis Report

Generated: {datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M')}

## 1. Demand Signals ✅

- **Total Posts Analyzed:** {analysis['demand']['total_posts']}
- **Average Engagement:** {analysis['demand']['avg_score']:.1f} upvotes per post
- **Discussion Frequency:** {analysis['demand']['posts_per_month']:.1f} posts/month
- **Total Community Engagement:** {analysis['demand']['total_engagement']} interactions

**Top Discussions:**
"""
        for post in analysis['demand']['top_posts'][:3]:
            report += f"\n- [{post['title']}]({post['url']}) ({post['score']} upvotes)"
        
        report += f"""

## 2. Pain Severity 🔥

- **High-Pain Posts:** {analysis['pain']['high_pain_posts_count']}
- **Average Pain Score:** {analysis['pain']['avg_pain_score']:.2f}/10

**Most Painful Issues:**
"""
        for post in analysis['pain']['top_pain_posts'][:3]:
            report += f"\n- [{post['title']}]({post['url']}) (Pain: {post['pain_score']}, Score: {post['score']})"
        
        report += f"""

## 3. Willingness to Pay 💰

- **Pricing Discussions:** {analysis['pricing']['pricing_discussion_count']} posts mention pricing

## 4. Competitor Analysis 🎯

(Detailed competitor breakdown would go here)

## Recommendations

Based on the analysis:

1. **Market Validation:** {'STRONG' if analysis['demand']['total_posts'] > 50 else 'WEAK'}
2. **Pain Point Severity:** {'HIGH' if analysis['pain']['high_pain_posts_count'] > 10 else 'MODERATE'}
3. **Suggested Next Steps:**
   - Interview top posters for deeper insights
   - Build MVP focusing on highest pain points
   - Test pricing with {analysis['demand']['total_posts'] // 10} potential users

## Risk Factors ⚠️

- Monitor for seasonal trends
- Validate across multiple subreddits
- Consider demographic biases in Reddit userbase
"""
        
        return report

# Usage
analyzer = RedditViabilityAnalyzer(
    supabase_url=os.getenv('SUPABASE_URL'),
    supabase_key=os.getenv('SUPABASE_KEY'),
    reddit_client_id=os.getenv('REDDIT_CLIENT_ID'),
    reddit_secret=os.getenv('REDDIT_SECRET')
)

# Scrape relevant subreddits
posts = analyzer.scrape_subreddit(
    'EntrepreneurRideAlong',
    keywords=['expense management', 'travel expenses', 'receipts', 'reimbursement'],
    timeframe_months=6
)

# Analyze viability
analysis = {
    'demand': analyzer.analyze_demand_signals(posts),
    'pain': analyzer.analyze_pain_severity(posts),
    'pricing': analyzer.analyze_willingness_to_pay(posts),
    'competitors': analyzer.analyze_competitor_saturation(posts)
}

# Store and report
analyzer.store_in_supabase(posts, analysis)
report = analyzer.generate_report(analysis)

print(report)

Supabase Schema

-- reddit_posts table
CREATE TABLE reddit_posts (
    post_id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
    title TEXT NOT NULL,
    text TEXT,
    score INTEGER,
    num_comments INTEGER,
    created_at TIMESTAMPTZ,
    url TEXT,
    subreddit TEXT,
    keyword TEXT,
    scraped_at TIMESTAMPTZ,
    sentiment_score FLOAT,
    pain_score INTEGER,
    created_at_index TIMESTAMPTZ
);

CREATE INDEX idx_reddit_posts_subreddit ON reddit_posts(subreddit);
CREATE INDEX idx_reddit_posts_keyword ON reddit_posts(keyword);
CREATE INDEX idx_reddit_posts_created ON reddit_posts(created_at);

-- viability_analysis table
CREATE TABLE viability_analysis (
    id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT uuid_generate_v4(),
    analyzed_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT NOW(),
    product_idea TEXT,
    demand_signals JSONB,
    pain_severity JSONB,
    pricing_insights JSONB,
    competitor_analysis JSONB,
    recommendation TEXT
);

-- Enable pgvector for semantic search
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS vector;

ALTER TABLE reddit_posts ADD COLUMN embedding vector(1536);

CREATE INDEX ON reddit_posts USING ivfflat (embedding vector_cosine_ops);

Superset Dashboard SQL

-- Demand Trend Over Time
SELECT
    DATE_TRUNC('month', created_at) AS month,
    COUNT(*) AS post_count,
    AVG(score) AS avg_score,
    SUM(num_comments) AS total_comments
FROM reddit_posts
WHERE subreddit IN ('EntrepreneurRideAlong', 'SaaS', 'startups')
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1 DESC;

-- Pain Severity Distribution
SELECT
    CASE
        WHEN pain_score >= 5 THEN 'High Pain'
        WHEN pain_score >= 3 THEN 'Moderate Pain'
        ELSE 'Low Pain'
    END AS pain_level,
    COUNT(*) AS post_count,
    AVG(score) AS avg_engagement
FROM reddit_posts
WHERE pain_score > 0
GROUP BY 1;

-- Keyword Performance
SELECT
    keyword,
    COUNT(*) AS mentions,
    AVG(score) AS avg_score,
    SUM(num_comments) AS total_discussion
FROM reddit_posts
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 2 DESC
LIMIT 10;

-- Competitor Mentions
-- (Would need NER processing first)
SELECT
    competitor_name,
    sentiment_category,
    COUNT(*) AS mentions
FROM competitor_mentions
GROUP BY 1, 2;

Integration Points

With Firecrawl

# Use Firecrawl for JavaScript-heavy Reddit pages
from firecrawl import FirecrawlApp

app = FirecrawlApp(api_key=os.getenv('FIRECRAWL_API_KEY'))

# Crawl subreddit
result = app.crawl_url(
    'https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/search?q=expense+management',
    params={'scrapeOptions': {'formats': ['markdown', 'html']}}
)

With Notion Tracking

# Log findings to Notion
from notion_client import Client

notion = Client(auth=os.getenv('NOTION_TOKEN'))

notion.pages.create(
    parent={"database_id": VALIDATION_DB_ID},
    properties={
        "Product Idea": {"title": [{"text": {"content": "Travel Expense Management"}}]},
        "Demand Score": {"number": analysis['demand']['total_posts']},
        "Pain Severity": {"select": {"name": "High"}},
        "Status": {"select": {"name": "Validated"}}
    }
)

With Superset Visualization

Auto-generate dashboard showing:

• Demand trends over time
• Pain severity heatmap
• Competitor mention frequency
• Sentiment distribution
• Top keywords and topics

Output Formats

Viability Score Card

Product Viability Assessment: Travel & Expense Management

Demand Signal:        ████████░░ 8/10 (85 relevant posts/month)
Pain Severity:        █████████░ 9/10 (High pain indicators)
Willingness to Pay:   ██████░░░░ 6/10 (Budget discussions present)
Market Opportunity:   ████████░░ 8/10 (Gaps in current solutions)

OVERALL VIABILITY:    ████████░░ 8.2/10 ✅ PROCEED WITH MVP

Recommendation: Strong validation signals. Build MVP focused on receipt
OCR and policy validation - highest pain points identified.

Detailed Findings Report

Generated markdown with:

• Executive summary
• Quantitative metrics
• Qualitative user quotes
• Competitor analysis
• Feature prioritization
• Risk assessment
• Next steps

Examples

Example 1: Validate SaaS Alternative Idea

Prompt:

Validate product viability for "Self-hosted SAP Concur alternative 
for SMBs" by analyzing r/Accounting, r/SmallBusiness, r/Entrepreneur

Output:

• 127 posts discussing expense management pain
• 89% mention current tools are "too expensive"
• Average pain score: 7.2/10
• Top complaint: Concur pricing ($15K/year)
• Opportunity: Budget-conscious SMBs ($100-500/month pricing)
• Recommendation: STRONG VALIDATION - Build MVP

Example 2: Feature Prioritization

Prompt:

Analyze Reddit discussions to prioritize features for expense 
management tool. Focus on r/Accounting over past 12 months.

Output: Feature Priority (by mention frequency + pain severity):

1. Receipt OCR (mentioned 89 times, pain: 8/10) ← BUILD FIRST
2. Policy validation (mentioned 67 times, pain: 9/10)
3. Mobile app (mentioned 54 times, pain: 6/10)
4. Multi-currency (mentioned 43 times, pain: 7/10)
5. Integration with QBO (mentioned 38 times, pain: 5/10)

Example 3: Competitive Intelligence

Prompt:

Map competitive landscape for travel expense tools by analyzing
user sentiment across r/Accounting, r/BusinessIntelligence

Output: Competitor Satisfaction Matrix:

• SAP Concur: 342 mentions, 38% positive, 62% negative
  • Pain: "Too expensive", "Complex setup"
  • Opportunity: SMB market
• Expensify: 178 mentions, 61% positive, 39% negative
  • Pain: "Limited customization"
  • Opportunity: Enterprise features
• Divvy: 89 mentions, 72% positive, 28% negative
  • Strength: Modern UX
  • Gap: Lacks BIR compliance

Cost Savings

vs. Paid Research Tools

Tool	Annual Cost	Self-Hosted Reddit Analysis	Savings
Gong Insights	$30,000	$0 (open Reddit API)	$30,000
Wynter	$12,000	$240 (Firecrawl + compute)	$11,760
UserTesting	$6,000	$0 (Reddit is free)	$6,000

Total Annual Savings: $47,760

Additional Value:

• Real, unbiased user feedback
• Longitudinal trend analysis
• Competitive intelligence
• Continuous validation (not one-time)

Best Practices

Subreddit Selection

✅ Choose high-signal subreddits:

• Niche communities (r/Accounting vs. r/business)
• Problem-focused discussions
• Active communities (>10K members)
• Recent activity (posts in last 30 days)

Keyword Strategy

✅ Use specific pain language:

• "frustrated with [tool]"
• "looking for alternative to [competitor]"
• "how do you handle [problem]"
• "anyone else struggling with [pain]"

Analysis Frequency

✅ Monthly monitoring for:

• New trends and pain points
• Competitor mentions and sentiment
• Feature request patterns
• Market opportunity shifts

Troubleshooting

Low Post Volume

Issue: Only 10 posts found in 6 months
Fix: Expand subreddit list, broaden keywords, increase timeframe

Reddit API Rate Limits

Issue: "429 Too Many Requests"
Fix: Add delays between requests, upgrade to Premium API

Sentiment Analysis Inaccuracy

Issue: Sarcasm misclassified as positive
Fix: Use domain-specific models, manual review of top posts

License

MIT (Reddit API requires attribution)

References

• Reddit API Documentation
• PRAW: Python Reddit API Wrapper
• Product Validation Frameworks
• Reddit as Market Research Tool

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Validate ideas with real user signals before building. Save months of wasted development on products nobody wants. 🚀