Goldmines in the Gaps: Turning Every "Sorry, We Don't Do That" Into Your Next Venture

Let's start with an uncomfortable truth: most software products are built on a foundation of well-intentioned lies. You know the type - those shiny features promised in the sales deck that turn out to be "on the roadmap" (translation: we'll get to it sometime between next quarter and the heat death of the universe). Having watched my own luxury homeware business crumble partly because I promised things I couldn't deliver, I've developed a perverse fascination with these broken promises. They're not just disappointments – they're bloody brilliant business opportunities hiding in plain sight.

The Beautiful Misery of Unmet Expectations

Every time a product manager says, "That's an interesting request, we'll consider it for a future release," what they're really saying is: "That feature will never see the light of day, but I don't want to lose you as a customer just yet." This gap between what companies promise and what they deliver isn't just frustrating – it's the entrepreneurial equivalent of finding money in the street.

The truth is, established companies leave these gaps deliberately. They're not stupid; they're strategic. They've calculated that solving 80% of their target market's problems is more profitable than solving 100%. That remaining 20%? That's your territory. That's where the next generation of successful SaaS businesses will be born.

Having learned from my own business mistakes, I've come to see that the most fertile ground for new ventures isn't in creating something entirely new – it's in fixing what others have deliberately left broken. This approach of identifying focused micro-SaaS opportunities often leads to more sustainable businesses than trying to build massive platforms from scratch.

How to Mine the Broken Promise Goldmine

The process of finding these opportunities isn't complicated, but it does require a certain kind of pathological curiosity about other people's disappointments. (Is that weird? Probably. Is it profitable? Absolutely.)

• Haunt online communities where users of popular software gather – Reddit, Discord, Facebook Groups, forums.
• Look for comments that start with "I wish [Product X] would just..." or "Does anyone know a workaround for..."
• Pay attention to feature requests that get lots of upvotes but remain unimplemented for years.
• Identify patterns in complaints – the fifth time you see someone moaning about the same missing feature, you've struck gold.
• Search for phrases like "alternative to [Product X] with [Specific Feature]" – these are people actively looking for solutions.

After experiencing burnout from trying to do everything alone in my previous venture, I've learned that the best business ideas don't require you to create an entire market from scratch. The demand is already there – you just need to spot it. While Reddit is a goldmine for discovering user frustrations, there are also other valuable sources for uncovering customer pain points that many entrepreneurs overlook.

The Beautiful Science of Feature Request Analysis

Not all broken promises are created equal. Some represent massive business opportunities; others are just one disgruntled user having a bad day. How do you tell the difference?

I've developed what I call the "Frustrated but Still Paying" principle. The sweet spot is finding features that users are desperate enough to want, but not so desperate that they'll abandon the main product entirely. They're frustrated, but they're still paying. That tension creates the perfect environment for a complementary product.

Look for these signs of a viable opportunity:

• The request has been made repeatedly over a long period (years, not months).
• Users are creating manual workarounds or using multiple tools to solve the problem.
• The main product company has explicitly said "no" to implementing it.
• The feature would serve a specific, profitable customer segment.
• The solution could potentially work with multiple popular platforms, not just one.

Remember, you're not trying to compete with the entire product – just fill in a specific gap that they've strategically chosen to leave open. And here's the thing about finding gaps: discovering that others are already attempting to solve similar problems is actually a validation signal, not a reason to abandon your idea.

From Identification to Execution: Building Your Gap-Filler

Having identified your promising gap, how do you turn it into a viable business without repeating the same sins of overpromising? (The irony of potentially creating my own broken promises while writing about exploiting them isn't lost on me.)

Start small. Embarrassingly small. The kind of small that makes you want to apologise when you show it to people. I learned the hard way that cash flow matters more than comprehensive features, so begin with the absolute minimum viable solution to the specific pain point you've identified.

• Build a simple tool that solves just one aspect of the broken promise – nothing more.
• Price it based on the value it delivers, not the complexity of your solution.
• Market directly to the communities where you found the complaints in the first place.
• Be transparent about what your solution does and doesn't do – no vague roadmap promises.
• Create easy integration with the main product that's failing to deliver.

The beauty of this approach is that you're not trying to boil the ocean. You don't need to build a comprehensive platform. You're simply creating the feature that should have existed but doesn't.

Real Examples of Promise-Mining Success

This isn't theoretical – some of the most successful SaaS products were born from the unfulfilled promises of others:

Zapier emerged because integration between different platforms was always "coming soon" but never quite arrived. They didn't build a better CRM or email marketing tool; they just made existing ones talk to each other.

Calendly arose because scheduling meetings was a persistent pain point that existing calendar applications acknowledged but never properly solved. They didn't try to replace Google Calendar; they just fixed one annoying aspect of it.

Notion capitalised on the fact that most project management tools promised to be all-in-one workspaces but ended up being rigid and specialised. They didn't try to be a better Jira or Trello; they created a flexible layer over all of them.

These companies didn't invent new categories. They simply identified promises that established players had broken and built focused solutions to fix them.

Avoiding the Broken Promise Trap Yourself

There's a certain cosmic justice in building a business on the broken promises of others, only to find yourself breaking promises to your own customers a few years later. It's the circle of SaaS life, and it's bloody depressing if you think about it too much.

To avoid becoming what you sought to replace:

• Be ruthlessly specific about what problem you're solving – and what problems you're explicitly not solving.
• Say "no" early and often to feature requests that dilute your focus.
• When you do say "yes," give realistic timelines, not vague promises.
• Build partnerships with complementary tools rather than trying to expand into their territory.
• Remember that a clear "no" is better than a vague "someday" that never comes.

The most successful gap-fillers don't try to become full platforms. They stay focused on doing one thing exceptionally well, even as they grow.

The Ethical Dimension: Predator or Symbiote?

Is this approach parasitic? Maybe a bit. But I prefer to think of it as symbiotic. You're not trying to kill the host – you're providing additional value in an ecosystem they've created but chosen not to fully optimise.

The best gap-fillers often end up being acquired by the very companies whose promises they fulfilled. They become the R&D departments that proved market demand for features the larger company wasn't sure would be worth building.

And even if acquisition isn't your goal, there's something deeply satisfying about hearing users say, "I can't believe I ever lived without this," about a product you built to solve a problem that a billion-dollar company couldn't be bothered to address.

In many ways, this is the purest form of entrepreneurship – identifying genuine market needs and fulfilling them efficiently, without the bloat and compromise that comes with trying to be everything to everyone.

Getting Started: Your Action Plan

If you're convinced that mining broken promises is your path to SaaS success (and frankly, there are worse strategies), here's your weekend homework:

• Pick three software products you use regularly and list the features you wish they had.
• Spend an hour on each product's community forum noting the most common complaints.
• Check if any third-party solutions already exist for these gaps (competitors research).
• Evaluate which gaps would be technically feasible for you to fill.
• Sketch a dead-simple solution to one gap that could be built in 30 days or less.

The goal isn't to find the perfect opportunity immediately, but to train your mind to see broken promises as business opportunities rather than just annoyances.

After all, in the immortal words that no successful entrepreneur has ever actually said but should have: "Your unfulfilled roadmap is my business plan."

The next time you find yourself muttering "I can't believe this product doesn't do that," stop and ask yourself: is this frustration actually your next venture in disguise? The gap between what's promised and what's delivered isn't just the source of user disappointment – it's the precise blueprint for your next success. All you have to do is listen for the promises being broken all around you, and start building the bridges others couldn't be bothered to complete.