Listen to the problem, not the product
November 10, 2026 · 6 min read
Short answer
Most teams research their own product, but new and small products are rarely discussed online. The people you want to serve are already describing the problem, the workarounds and the tools they gave up on. Start there.
Why searching for your own product comes up empty
When you set up a listening tool, the first instinct is to type in your product name. For a large brand that works. For anyone else it returns a handful of mentions, most of them your own posts.
That silence is not a sign nobody cares. It means the conversation is happening one level up, about the job people are trying to get done. A founder building a scheduling tool for clinics will find almost nothing about their app, and plenty of front-desk staff venting about double bookings.
The problem is where the honest language lives
People describe problems in their own words long before they know a product exists to fix them. Those words are the ones they will type into a search bar, the ones that should appear on your homepage, and the ones that tell you how painful the problem really is.
Product mentions, by contrast, are often filtered through marketing, review incentives or brand loyalty. Problem talk is messier, and more useful.
What to look for in a problem-first search
Look for workarounds: spreadsheets, scripts, copy-and-paste routines. A workaround means someone cared enough to build their own fix.
Look for tools people quit, and why. A switching story tells you what a product promised and where it broke.
Look for repeated phrasing. When strangers in different communities use the same words for the same frustration, you have found something real rather than one loud voice.
How Lysnd approaches it
Lysnd's "Ask a specific question" search has no product field on purpose. You describe the problem or workflow, and it searches discussion communities for people talking about it. Results are grouped into opportunities, each with exact quotes and links back to the original posts, so you can check every claim yourself.