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.

What happens to the devices that cannot renew a short-lived certificate on their own?

Public TLS certificate lifetimes are being cut to 200 days now and far shorter over the next few years, and while automated renewal handles servers and load balancers, firmware and management controllers that only accept a manual upload now need a human every few weeks.

Category: Others · Trend: Agents · Opportunity score: 8.3 / 10

What is the “What happens to the devices that cannot renew a short-lived certificate on their own?” problem in 2026?

Who has this problem?

Sysadmins and infrastructure teams responsible for appliances, out-of-band management controllers and embedded devices with web interfaces.

Recorded source context

Source label: r/sysadmin thread on what SSL certificate providers are doing about shorter lifetimes, 8 September 2026, 266 upvotes and 205 comments. (primary source).

Existing players in this space

ACME clients: Automate renewal on servers and load balancers, and cannot reach a device that only takes a file through its web page.
Certificate lifecycle platforms: Discover and renew at scale, with device support limited to the connectors each vendor has built.
Calendar reminders and manual uploads: The fallback for everything else, and it does not survive renewals every few weeks.

What existing players are missing

A renewal agent for the long tail of devices: it inventories every certificate on the network, and for each device that has no API drives the actual upload through its management interface, then verifies the new certificate is being served.

How Real Problem AI scores this opportunity

Aggregate score: 8.3 / 10. Four-axis rubric:

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

How to build a solution: stack hints

Network certificate discovery scan
ACME issuance
Per-model upload playbooks with browser automation
Post-renewal verification and alerting