Serial Entrepreneur and host of one of Europe's top business podcasts, Secret Leaders with over 50M downloads & angel investor in 85+ startups - here to share stories and studies breaking down the science of success - turning it from probability to predictability.
Automate What People Hate, And Charge For It.
Automate What People Hate, And Charge For It.Read time: 6 minutes Hey, welcome back. Last week, I talked about why fixing boring problems beat every exciting opportunity I chased. You can read that (and all past issues, here). Before we dive into the letter. It's been a wild week. Flew to the Cotswolds to sign a deal making Heights the official team provider for Alpine Formula 1. Then straight onto a plane to Munich to scope out potential European expansion. Busy doesn't quite cover it. But I'm handling it. Heights helps. Obviously. Today, I want to tell you the only business advice that matters. Automate what people hate and make them pay for it. The Math Is Brutal 90% of startups fail. 42% fail because they built something nobody wants. Not bad execution. Not lack of funding. Not competition. They solved problems nobody actually had. In 2024, 5.2 million new business applications were filed in the United States. Up 49% since 2019. Millions of people building things. Most of them solving problems that don't exist. The Pattern Nobody Sees Successful businesses don't create demand. They redirect it. People are already paying money. Already wasting time. Already doing something they hate. You just automate the part they hate. Then charge them for it. Accounting software didn't convince people they needed to track finances. People already were. In spreadsheets. On paper. Badly. Slowly. Painfully. Payroll systems didn't create the need to pay employees. They just automated the part business owners dreaded every two weeks. Uber didn't invent the need to get from A to B. They automated the part everyone hated: calling a cab, waiting, not knowing when it would arrive, fumbling for cash. Find The Hatred The best business opportunities hide in daily frustration. Tasks people do regularly. That take too long. That they complain about. That they'd pay someone else to handle. Not theoretical problems. Real ones. Where people are already spending money on inadequate solutions. If nobody's currently paying to solve it, that's not an opportunity. That's a warning sign. Heights Started With Hatred I wasn't sleeping. Burnout was destroying me. I tried everything. Doctors. Supplements. Sleep apps. Meditation. Nothing worked well enough. I hated it. The research. The trial and error. The conflicting information. The expensive supplements that didn't do anything. I was already spending money trying to fix it. So were millions of other people. Badly. Inefficiently. With products that didn't work. We didn't create demand for brain/mental health. We automated the part people hated: figuring out what actually works. Research-backed formulations. No guesswork. No trial and error. Just results. People were already looking for this. We just made it not suck. The Question That Matters What are people currently doing to solve this problem? If the answer is "nothing," you don't have a business. You have a theory. Real problems have messy, expensive, inefficient solutions already in place. People cobbling together spreadsheets. Hiring assistants. Using three tools that don't talk to each other. Wasting hours on tasks they hate. That's where money lives. In the gap between the painful current solution and the automated version. What People Actually Pay For Time saved. Frustration eliminated. Tasks they can stop thinking about. Not features. Not innovation. Not "disruption." They pay to make something they hate disappear. Bookkeeping. Expense tracking. Scheduling. Customer support. Data entry. Invoicing. Boring? Yes. Profitable? Extremely. Because people are already doing these things. Already hating them. Already looking for better solutions. The Mistake I See Constantly People build solutions to problems nobody's actively trying to solve. They fall in love with the idea before validating the hatred. They pitch innovation instead of relief. They explain features instead of eliminating pain. Then they're shocked when nobody buys. The companies that survive aren't the most innovative. They're the ones that automate the tasks people are already paying to avoid. How To Find It Talk to 50 people in your target market. Not friends. Strangers. Ask them: What task do you do regularly that you absolutely hate? Listen for patterns. If you hear the same complaint 30 times, you've found it. Then ask: How are you currently handling this? How much does it cost? How much time does it take? If they're already spending money or significant time on it, you have a market. If they shrug and say "it's fine," move on. The Unsexy Truth The most profitable businesses often look boring. Payroll. Inventory management. CRM systems. Scheduling software. No sexy stuff involved. Just automating things people were already doing manually. And hating it. QuickBooks didn't invent accounting. They just automated what small business owners hated about it. Calendly didn't invent scheduling. They automated the back-and-forth email dance everyone despised. Stripe didn't invent payments. They automated the part developers hated: dealing with merchant accounts and PCI compliance. What This Actually Looks Like Find a task people do repeatedly. That they complain about. That takes too long. That they'd gladly pay to never think about again. Automate it. Make it simple. Charge money. That's the entire playbook. Not "what cool thing can I build?" but "what painful thing can I eliminate?" The Test If you're building something right now, ask yourself: Are people currently spending money or significant time on this problem? Are they actively complaining about it? Would they pay to make it disappear? If the answer to all three isn't yes, you're building something nobody wants. Stop. Find the hatred. Automate it. Make them pay for it. That's the only business model that consistently works. To eliminating what people hate, Dan P.S. The next time someone complains about a task they have to do regularly, don't just sympathise. Ask how much time it takes. Ask what they're currently doing to fix it. That's not small talk. That's market research. |
Dan Murray
Serial Entrepreneur and host of one of Europe's top business podcasts, Secret Leaders with over 50M downloads & angel investor in 85+ startups - here to share stories and studies breaking down the science of success - turning it from probability to predictability.
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