Distribution/first-customer acquisition is the real unsolved problem (building is easy)

Pain point

Founders ship for 6–12 months and get zero traction; they don't know how to get the first 10 paying customers or any repeatable channel.

Signal

Strongest by *recurrence*, not votes — appears in 4 independent threads: "How did you get your first 10 paying customers?" (9), "Spent 6 months building... What's wrong?" (8), "Almost $500 in revenue" (commenter asked *how OP found customers*), and "You are not dumb enough to succeed" (165, commenters citing "building for months without talking to a single user"). A commenter noted this question is asked "dozens of times a day" — chronic, unsolved demand.

Opportunity

A "Distribution GTM Engine" — input your product URL, it generates a ranked 30-day channel plan with scripts, finds the 50 communities/subreddits/directories/ICP lists where your buyer actually is, and tracks outreach→reply→paid conversion. Lighter wedge: a paid "launch teardown" service ($199/audit) diagnosing why a launch flopped. *Feasibility: wedge service = immediate; full product = medium (data sourcing is the hard part).*

Evidence

• first 10 customers
• 6 months, no traction
• $500 MRR
• not dumb enough