If you're searching for your next big product idea, don't skip over the ones that feel obvious. Not because they're guaranteed to work—but because they often already are.

  • The messy Notion doc someone turned into a business.
  • The janky Chrome extension with 10K daily users.
  • The product that looks like it was designed in 2014—but people keep using it.

These are the kinds of product ideas that don’t look impressive at first glance—but damn if they don't work.

You've seen them. You've probably dismissed them. I have too.

It's easy to chase the sleek idea, the trendy launch, the thing that "feels" more ambitious. We want to feel like visionaries. But those obvious, duct-taped solutions are often solving something real—quietly and effectively.

It sucks to admit, but I've skipped over simple ideas because they didn't feel "smart" enough—only to watch someone else build them, grow them, and create a sticky little business around them.

How to spot better product ideas by watching what people already use

If you only take one thing away from this article, it should be this: You don't need a novel invention. You need a better observation.

  • The friction you've worked around five times this week? That might be it.
  • The tool you hate but still use? That might be it.
  • The "dumb" thing in your search history that keeps popping up? That might be it.

In my case, that’s exactly how Jasin started. I was tired of hacking ugly Amazon links into halfway-decent blog layouts. None of the existing tools felt modern—or remotely enjoyable to use. So I built the tool I wished existed: clean product displays, powered by the Amazon API, that actually look like they belong on a site built this decade.

It didn’t start as a grand plan—it started with a small friction point. But like many great product ideas, it kept resurfacing until I had to build it.

Ideas don't always shout. Sometimes they're buried in habits. In duct tape. In spreadsheets. But when you see someone suffer through a broken process and do it anyway? That's not a red flag. That's demand.

Great product ideas often look small at first. But once you start noticing the patterns—habits, workarounds, pain points—they show up everywhere.

Not because they're clever. Because they're useful.