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 does every security vendor ask for full admin API access and not know why?

A sysadmin asked a major security vendor's engineer which API permissions their product actually needs, the engineer had never been asked, and the team is now stuck in meetings reverse-engineering least privilege for software they are paying to protect them.

Category: LegalTech & Compliance · Trend: LLM · Opportunity score: 8.0 / 10

What is the “Why does every security vendor ask for full admin API access and not know why?” problem in 2026?

Who has this problem?

Sysadmins and IT security staff granting third-party vendors API access to endpoint, identity and cloud tools.

Recorded source context

Dataset source note: I don’t know what you mean, I’ve never been asked that before

This note may summarize the referenced material rather than quote it verbatim. Source label: Spiceworks Community thread on what to do when a security vendor is not secure, 23 September 2026, 28 posts and 275 likes. (primary source).

Existing players in this space

Vanta and Drata: Track vendor risk questionnaires, not the actual scopes a vendor's integration requests.
Microsoft Entra app consent and permissions: Shows what an app was granted, not what it truly uses.
Vendor security questionnaires: Self-attested and slow, with no link to the live API grant.

What existing players are missing

A tool that reads a vendor's integration docs and the requested scope list, observes the API calls the integration actually makes in a trial window, and produces the minimal permission set plus a report to push back on the vendor with.

How Real Problem AI scores this opportunity

Aggregate score: 8.0 / 10. Four-axis rubric:

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

How to build a solution: stack hints

API audit log ingestion (Entra, Okta, MDM)
LLM parsing of vendor docs and scope lists
Usage-based permission diffing
Least-privilege report generator