What 1000+ Startup Ideas on Reddit Reveal About Where Founders Are Actually Building Today

Recently, the team at Forum Ventures—a founder-first AI venture studio, accelerator, and pre-seed fund focused on the B2B SaaS zero-to-one journey—asked the community on Reddit to share their startup pitch. The response was overwhelming. We had thousands of comments and over 1,000 startup ideas. So, we decided to analyze them to see what’s trending right now across the tech ecosystem.  

But first, the dataset

The dataset is composed of aggregated visible comments across multiple threads. Comments identified through LLM processing as a “startup or business idea” were extracted as text, with duplicate comments and users being removed from the total dataset.

We’ve sorted each startup idea according to various classifications, such as but not limited to:

• Industry
• Market size (TAM, SAM, and SOM individually)
• Business model & pricing strategies

Key Findings: What Founders Are Building

1. AI Is Everywhere. But It’s No Longer Generic.

The majority of AI pitches are:

• Vertical-specific
• Workflow-embedded
• Often framed around compliance or auditability

Examples include healthcare infra with HIPAA framing, AI report generators, and task-specific automation.

Insight: The market has moved from “AI that chats” to “AI that replaces a job step.”

At Forum, we see these high-margin, low-churn niches as the perfect fit for our 16-week accelerator. We provide $100,000 via SAFE agreements (typically for 7.5% equity) and a 1:1 fractional cofounder to help founders dominate these underserved TAMs.

2. Micro-SaaS for Legacy Trades Is Quietly Thriving

There is a growth in Micro SaaS products that serve extremely niche markets with smaller TAMs. We notice examples such as automation tools for contractors, HVAC, and field services.

Rather than competing with thousands of founders over a single TAM, some founders are making a conscious choice to dominate smaller, niche TAMs lower than the $1B the typical VC investor looks for. The result of these startups can be even better ARPU, lower churn, and fast returns (a consequence of lower competition).

This hints at a potential thesis for investors: consider markets that are seemingly too small. Then, bet on these niche markets as a whole to scale, represent their larger parent market, and the startups’ ability to become the legacy solution of that market. 

Why? We can surmise that within these niche markets, there are:

• Undigitized workflows
• Clearer unsolved pain points
• Willingness to pay and higher pricing power
• Low churn 

Insight: These businesses won’t make headlines, but they do generate real cash flow. Whether they fit a traditional venture model is still an open question. In many cases, their outcomes may be better suited to rollups, strategic acquirers, or mid-market private equity rather than hyper-growth VC paths.

Forum’s POV: Regardless of where a company ultimately lands on the capital spectrum, the hardest part is still distribution. Attention is scarce, buyers are fragmented, and legacy industries are notoriously difficult to reach. That’s why at Forum Ventures, we operate as a fractional co-founder, working directly with founders on customer discovery, product validation, and GTM strategy. The goal isn’t just to build useful software, but to actually break through, reach buyers, and earn real demand.

3. Mental Health & Habits Are Productized, Not Clinical

Founders are interestingly building B2C mental health applications and tools, which are often more challenging to monetize despite higher development/research costs. 

This is a response to the industry’s growing demand for mental health support and services. Over 25% of Canadians reported unmet needs in 2018, with a shortage of 88,000 mental health counselors by 2037.

Despite the lack of immediate profitability, founders seem to be interested in a long term bet on the industry, while most startups are focused on B2B applications. 

Successfully productizing mental health services allows a provider to fill the massive gap in service supply for mental health. 

Examples include:

• Bite-sized CBT-style tools
• Gamified habit loops
• Youth and family-focused mental health products

Insight: Demand remains strong, but delivery has shifted toward micro-interventions, not therapy marketplaces.

Forum’s POV:

It’s interesting to see the renewed influx of B2C tech after so many years of B2B being the clear focus. The shift toward B2B after the dotcom bubble wasn’t random. It happened for a couple of practical reasons.

First, B2B companies tend to get to revenue faster. When job markets tighten and fundraising becomes less predictable, early profitability and stability matter a lot more. Many founders simply can’t afford to run long, loss-heavy experiments anymore.

Second, B2B is where venture investors can be most helpful early. A small number of the right introductions can turn into real revenue quickly. That feedback loop naturally shapes investment theses, which then reinforces where capital flows. That’s why here at Forum Ventures we’ve built out an intentional customer network across specific industries who are actively looking to meet startups for potential pilots and design partnerships.

B2C businesses don’t have that luxury. They’re often dependent on heavy marketing spend to solve the chicken-and-egg problem, especially for marketplaces and platforms. When capital is tight, that fragility becomes much more visible. Without funding to fuel growth, even strong products struggle to get off the ground.

The result is that many entrepreneurs gravitate back toward B2B. Not necessarily because it’s more exciting, but because it’s more survivable. It offers a clearer path to early revenue, more support from investors, and a way to build momentum without betting everything on scale from day one.

4. Distribution Has Become the Product

A surprising number of tools exist solely to help founders:

• Get visibility
• Build backlinks
• Manage relationships
• Promote launches

Distribution is a growing bottleneck, so founders are now mass selling distribution. We’re seeing a growth of startup ideas being centered around sales, personal CRM, AI-generated content and UGC, and founder/product directories (variations of ProductHunt). 

Forum’s POV: Tools can amplify distribution, but they don’t replace judgment. We see this trip founders up all the time. It’s easy to add software, much harder to decide who you’re really selling to, where attention already exists, and what actually cuts through. This is where our hands-on, fractional model comes in. We work alongside founders early to build that judgment, so distribution becomes a muscle they develop, not a dependency they outsource.

5. Compliance Is Now a Headline Feature

Healthcare and enterprise-facing products increasingly lead with HIPAA, Audit trails, and Security posture. 

Insight: Compliance has moved from procurement friction to top-of-funnel positioning.

Forum’s POV: We see compliance showing up earlier because it determines who will even take the first meeting. Founders are often making assumptions very early, what level of compliance buyers actually expect, which standards matter now versus later, and what truly needs to be built versus documented. Our hands-on model helps teams pressure-test those assumptions through real customer conversations and deal-level feedback. The aim is to avoid overbuilding too early, while also not missing trust signals that quietly block progress. Getting compliance “right enough” at the right moment can be the difference between stalled outreach and real conversations.

6. Pricing Is Experimentation-Heavy

New patterns of pricing are emerging with the growth of microsaas apps, AI agents, stablecoins and Web3 technology, as well as company costs being increasingly reliant on AI microtransactions. 

Common patterns include pay-as-you-go, credit based pricing, and lifetime deals. 

Despite a wide array of new services and niche markets being targeted, competition has increased overall as evident from the high concentration of similar ideas, as previously stated in growth & distribution based products.

As a response to both competitive pressure and resistance to change to these newer unfamiliar AI technologies, founders are optimizing for activation and trust, not initial ARR. The result is the flexible and experimental pricing trend we’re seeing among these business models.

Forum’s POV: We’re seeing pricing behave less like a fixed decision and more like an ongoing experiment. Early teams are often figuring out pricing alongside positioning, onboarding, and trust, not once those things feel settled. Our hands-on 1:1 support helps founders use pricing as a learning tool, grounded in real customer conversations, early usage patterns, and deal feedback. The goal isn’t to find the perfect price on day one, but to avoid locking into a model that slows adoption or sends the wrong signal about how the product should be used. 

Conclusion

Times are changing. Across roughly 1,000 ideas, one pattern keeps showing up. Founders are building closer to revenue, closer to real workflows, and closer to measurable ROI.

This feels less like a trend and more like a correction. After years of tech built around perceived value, we’re seeing a shift toward companies that can actually support that value with durable revenue. AI isn’t disappearing. It’s getting more practical.

That’s where Forum Ventures fits. Through our venture studio, we deploy $1.75M each year to co-build seven companies in high-ROI AI verticals. Through our accelerator, we invest in dozens more, pairing capital with hands-on, 1:1 fractional co-founder support across customer discovery, GTM, pricing, and early fundraising.

If you’re building something close to the problem, close to the buyer, and ready to pressure-test it in the real world, we’re probably a fit. If you’re still exploring, but want to do that work with structure and support, we’re worth talking to.

You can connect with us on LinkedIn, or pitch us directly when you’re ready here.

FAQ

What types of startups are founders building most right now?

Founders are building closer to revenue and real workflows. The most common themes include vertical AI tied to specific jobs, micro-SaaS for niche industries, distribution and sales tooling, compliance-first products, and experimentation-heavy pricing models.

How did Forum Ventures analyze startup ideas from Reddit?

We aggregated visible comments across multiple Reddit threads and used LLM-based filtering to identify distinct startup pitches. Duplicate users and repeated ideas were removed, resulting in a conservative dataset of roughly 300 to 1,000 unique startup ideas depending on filtering assumptions.

Why are micro-SaaS and niche markets becoming more popular?

Capital is more selective and founders are prioritizing faster paths to revenue. Niche markets often have clearer pain points, less competition, higher willingness to pay, and lower churn, making them attractive even with smaller total addressable markets.

Is vertical AI more investable than general AI products?

Vertical AI tends to show clearer ROI because it replaces specific workflow steps and aligns with measurable outcomes. This makes it easier to sell, easier to defend, and more attractive to buyers and investors than generic AI tools.

Who is this analysis most useful for?

This analysis is most useful for early-stage founders exploring what to build, operators validating ideas, and investors evaluating where early traction and durable demand are emerging in the current market.

‍

Forum Ventures is a founder-first AI venture studio, accelerator, and pre-seed fund. We focus exclusively on the B2B SaaS journey from zero to one, providing $100k to $250k in initial capital and fractional co-founder support in GTM, fundraising, and product validation for a community of over 900 founders.