What is Real Problem AI?

Real Problem AI is a curated directory of 100 real problems worth building an AI startup around. Each problem is scored honestly on severity, AI feasibility, market signal, and competition gap. We're for builders looking for what to build, not for ethics debates about AI.

What is the difference between Real Problem AI and AI ethics or AI risks indexes?

Real Problem AI catalogues problems AI can solve — productive, commercial opportunities for builders. AI ethics indexes catalogue problems with AI itself (bias, environmental cost, copyright, consciousness). Different intent, different audience: founders and indie hackers vs researchers and policy folks.

What should I build with AI in 2026?

Look for problems with high severity (it costs people hours, sleep, or revenue every week), high AI feasibility (LLMs, vision or voice are great at this today), strong market signal (Reddit threads + willingness to pay), and a clear competition gap (incumbents miss the same obvious thing). Real Problem AI scores 100 such problems for you on those four axes.

Where do Real Problem AI's startup ideas come from?

From three sources, scanned each cycle: 1) Reddit threads where people describe a real friction in their own words, 2) podcasts and talks of founders young builders trust (Nikhil Kamath, Aman Gupta, Ankur Warikoo, Raj Shamani, Andrej Karpathy, Greg Isenberg), and 3) a continuous 1,000+ source scan covering forums, app store reviews, regulator filings, and field interviews.

Is Real Problem AI free?

Yes. Browsing every problem, opening every score breakdown, raising your hand on a co-founder match, and the founder vault are all free. There is no paywall.

How is each problem scored?

Four axes, each 1-10, weighted: Problem Severity (30%), AI Feasibility (25%), Market Signal (25%), Competition Gap (20%). Weighted average is the Opportunity Score on each card. Only problems clearing 7.0+ make the live list.

Why doesn't my brand show up when a customer asks ChatGPT who to buy from?

Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI for a vendor shortlist, and brands with no visibility in those answers are invisible at the exact moment of consideration, regardless of ad spend or SEO rank.

Category: Marketing, Sales & CRM · Trend: LLM · Opportunity score: 7.6 / 10

What is the “Why doesn't my brand show up when a customer asks ChatGPT who to buy from?” problem in 2026?

Who has this problem?

SMB owners and B2B marketers whose demand is quietly shifting to AI answer engines.

Evidence this problem is real

“Businesses that are not optimized for AI citation are missing nearly half of their potential audience.”

Sourced from CommunicaPRO, 'GEO 2026' generative-engine-optimization analysis; 2026 GEO/AEO citation-share reporting. (link)

Existing players in this space

Profound / Peec (early GEO tools): Enterprise-priced dashboards, thin on the fix
Traditional SEO suites (Ahrefs, Semrush): Built for blue-links, not AI answer inclusion
PR / agencies: Slow, expensive, no per-prompt visibility loop

What existing players are missing

An affordable tool that tracks whether a brand is cited across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI for the prompts its buyers actually use, diagnoses why competitors are named instead, and produces the specific Reddit, review, and content moves that move the citation.

How Real Problem AI scores this opportunity

Aggregate score: 7.6 / 10. Four-axis rubric:

Problem severity: 7 / 10
AI feasibility today: 8 / 10
Market signal: 9 / 10
Competition gap: 6 / 10

How to build a solution: stack hints

Multi-engine prompt monitoring
Citation-share and share-of-voice tracking
Gap diagnosis vs named competitors
Content and Reddit action generator

Why this problem is archived

Trimmed to 100-cap (lowest opportunity_score)