Ask HN: How do you discover real user needs without relying on keyword tools?

Posted by jackzhuo 13 hours ago

I’ve been using tools like SEMrush and Similarweb to find keywords for small tools, but I increasingly feel stuck:

- Most “easy” keywords have very small volume - Harder keywords often point to domains I don’t actually understand - Even when I find a keyword, the real user intent is often unclear - There’s a big gap between a keyword and knowing who the users are, where they hang out, and how to talk to them

SEO feels passive, while talking to real users feels active — but much harder to systematize.

For those who’ve built small tools or indie products: how do you approach demand discovery today? What did you replace keyword-driven thinking with, if anything?

Comments

Comment by austin-cheney 12 hours ago

This is soooo challenging because it’s a two part problem.

1. You have to be in a position to see the great frustration, inefficiency, or obstruction. You will know it when you see it. It will be scary obvious when you do see it while everyone else just continues accepting broken practices as the accepted reality. It takes a special person in the right place at the right time to accomplish this, which is like a magical opportunity.

2. That first step is like a rare constellation alignment of the stars, and yet as rare as it is it’s the easy part. The challenging part is convincing people your solution is better.

Comment by jackzhuo 10 hours ago

This describes my situation almost exactly, and it’s what triggered my reflection.

I built a “product” starting from keywords, but then realized I didn’t actually know where the users were, or how to talk to them. There was no obvious place for real feedback.

Starting from keywords let me ship something, but it also meant I was missing the professional context around the problem — the deeper understanding you only get by being inside the system where the frustration exists.

In hindsight, I think I optimized for building something, not for being close to the problem itself.

Comment by KellyCriterion 11 hours ago

To find out user needs, you need to understand the users - then you can craft a service around it and the relevant words will be obviously if you are deep down in the context. Best case is to be an expert in some field and see something that wasnt solved so far with marketavailable tools.

Comment by jackzhuo 10 hours ago

That resonates a lot with my experience.

I’ve found that discovering keywords is rarely the beginning of understanding a need. Knowing where people with that need actually are — and how they talk about the problem — seems much more important.

Even if you do find a viable keyword, SEO alone usually isn’t enough. You still have to talk to users, watch how they use (or don’t use) the solution, and iterate based on real feedback. Keywords feel more like a downstream artifact once you’re already deep in the context.

Comment by CrzyLngPwd 13 hours ago

That seems like a backwards approach to me.

Surely you make something you need, and if you need it, others will too.

Comment by jackzhuo 10 hours ago

I think this works well if you’re already a practitioner in a domain and have repeated exposure to its problems.

For many indie developers, though, that assumption doesn’t always hold. We’re often not domain experts, and starting purely from personal pain can be misleading if the pain isn’t shared or frequent enough.

In my experience, the challenge isn’t “starting from yourself” vs “starting from keywords”, but figuring out how to get close enough to a real problem space to develop that kind of insight in the first place.