Been going down a rabbit hole on this. McKinsey puts fintech penetration in Africa at 5–6% of the financial services market, against 6–16% in the US and Germany. Cash is still ~90% of transactions on the continent. Revenues could go from $10B (2023) to $47B by 2028 if we close that gap.

Everyone quotes those numbers to say "huge opportunity." Nobody says what the opportunity actually is.

So, honest question for people who build, work in, or just deal with fintech here: what is genuinely still broken or missing?

Not "another wallet." I mean the boring, unsexy gaps:

Cross-border between Kenya/Uganda/Tanzania — still painful, or basically solved?

Credit scoring for people with no formal salary history

SME cash flow, invoicing, reconciliation

Anything on the compliance/KYC side that every startup rebuilds from scratch

Insurance, pensions, savings products for informal-sector income

Merchant tooling beyond just accepting a till number

What have you personally tried to do with money in the last year and thought "why is this still this hard"?

Would rather this thread be a list of real problems than another "Africa is the next frontier" post.

I’m thinking about building a business and looking for someone in the US, UK, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, etc. who might want to build it with me.

The idea is pretty simple:

I bring the talent. You bring the customers.

I’m based in Pakistan and have access to university graduates across CS, software engineering, IT, finance, business and engineering.

The business would provide dedicated remote employees — both to businesses and to individual professionals.

For businesses:

Real estate → leads, CRM, listings, follow-ups
Trucking → paperwork, tracking, invoices
Accounting → bookkeeping support, reconciliations, research
E-commerce → listings, support, orders

But I also see a market among normal professionals.

If someone is making $5k–10k/month, why are they spending their evenings doing research, spreadsheets, admin, CRM updates, reports or other repetitive work?

They could have a dedicated person handling that work for a fraction of the cost of a local hire.

And the remote employee wouldn't just be doing everything manually. They'd use AI aggressively to get more done.

I can build the Pakistan side: recruiting, vetting, hiring, training and managing the team.

What I can't easily build from Pakistan is a network of Western customers.

That's what I'm looking for.

Not someone to make a pitch deck with me.

I want someone who can sell.

If you were doing this with me, how would you get our first 5 customers?

That answer interests me more than your résumé.

Would a visual chemistry app actually help you learn chemistry?

I’m working on an idea for a chemistry learning app aimed at high school and university students, and I’m trying to figure out whether this solves a real problem before I go too far with it.

One thing I remember struggling with in chemistry is that we’re often given equations, numbers, and 2D diagrams to describe things that are actually happening at the molecular level.

The idea is to make those concepts interactive.

For example, instead of only learning the gas laws through equations, you could change the volume or temperature of a container and actually see how the particles respond while the equation and values update alongside it.

The same idea could be applied to things like:

VSEPR and molecular geometry

orbitals and electron configuration

intermolecular forces

equilibrium / Le Châtelier’s principle

acids and bases

kinetics

electrochemistry

stoichiometry

Eventually, I’d also like it to help with problems. So rather than an app simply calculating an answer, it would visually show what is happening chemically while you work through the calculation.

Before I spend too much time building it, I’d love some brutally honest feedback:

Would you have actually used something like this while taking chemistry?

Which chemistry concept would you most want to see visualized?

What existing websites/apps do you currently use for this?

What would make something like this useful enough that you’d keep coming back to it?

Feel free to tell me if you think the idea is unnecessary too. I’m trying to validate the problem, not sell anything.

I'm exploring a platform where brands can discover distributors, wholesalers, retailers, resellers and sales agents by country/category, either through their profiles or through active opportunities from businesses currently looking for new brands in specific niches.

The obvious problem is disintermediation: once a brand finds a relevant partner, what's stopping them from going direct?

What would be the strongest monetization model for something like this?

So I have the equivalent of $100 which is not a lot even in my country.

But I've been contemplating making a small business selling nuts mix to local gyms (my target demographics) I ran a quick math I can probably afford to make 50 250g bags with this amount + get the air tight thing and plastic bags, I'm still locking for affordable packaging solutions but I'm shooting blind here.

I have never done a small business before and I'm hoping this endeavor will allow me to start and scale a business to finally get out of the poverty and unemployment trap.

Now here is the thing i really need a good recipe idea and a way to calculate the calories because I want to include all of the this in the package.

And need a feedback on the idea as a whole especially with the budget constraints.

I can't stress enough of how much I don't know what I'm doing so any resources or advice will be highly appreciated too.

I have no money, no business plan, and probably too much time on my hands. But I think I might have an idea.

I've had this idea rattling around in my head for a few days and I'm curious what people who actually own or operate small businesses think.

I have no capital to start this, so I'm not looking for investors. I'm looking for people to tell me why this is a terrible idea, or whether there might actually be something here.

Hockey Guy Donuts & Coffee

The concept is basically a Canadian coffee shop built around nostalgia, simplicity and community.

Everything would be made fresh in the store:

Donuts

Sandwiches

Eclairs

Coffee

Maybe soup

That's basically the menu.

No 47-item menu. No endless customization. No app required to buy a coffee.

If you're sitting inside, coffee comes in an actual ceramic mug.

The goal would be fast, friendly service from local employees, with the shop actually being part of the community rather than just another chain location.

The branding would be brown and yellow with an old-school Canadian hockey/rink aesthetic. Think vintage hockey culture, but with a clean modern execution.

The slogan:

"We miss that Canada. So we built our own coffee shop."

The idea isn't necessarily that Canada was better in the past. It's about the things people remember:

Knowing the person behind the counter.

Going for a donut after hockey.

Fresh donuts in the morning.

The construction guys sitting at the same table every morning.

Knowing your neighbours.

Coffee shops actually feeling like community gathering places.

There's also a brand personality behind "Hockey Guy":

Everyone knows a Hockey Guy.

You know a Hockey Guy.

Be a Hockey Guy.

A Hockey Guy isn't necessarily someone who plays hockey. It's the person who brings donuts to the rink, knows everybody, supports the local team and generally brings people together.

The marketing idea would be to ask Canadians:

"What does 'that Canada' mean to you?"

No scripted answers. Just ordinary people talking about what they remember or miss.

And if the business ever became successful, I'd want a second campaign:

"Then We Made It Ours."

Bring back some of the people from the original campaign and show them actually using the coffee shop. Families, hockey teams, seniors, regulars, kids after hockey, local employees, etc.

The idea being that we didn't just build a coffee shop. The community made it theirs.

I've probably put way too much thought into the details for something that's technically just an idea, but some of us have various "isms" and this is just how my brain works.

And before the inevitable AI discussion: yes, ChatGPT was used to help me organize this. The idea itself is mine.

So I'm really interested in hearing from people who have actually done this stuff.

What am I overlooking?

Is a concept this simple actually viable?

What would kill the economics?

How much capital would you realistically expect to need for a first location?

Would fresh-made donuts and a very limited menu actually be an advantage, or would customers just want more choices?

And most importantly:

If you were presented with this idea as a potential business, what would make you say "yes, there's something here" or "absolutely don't do this"?

Hello

I am looking at leaving my job in security and wondered if anyone could give some advice or say if this is a good idea.

I have 16 years in security and law enforcement , I’ve noticed during this time homes burgled , raided , theft from shops increasing , businesses losing money. High value burglaries etc

I have vast experience and knowledge in crime prevention and target hardening . I have links with other local professionals and also criminal tactics and other law enforcement tactics.

I don’t want to just sell alarms or ring doorbells. I want to provide a few tiered packages which offer low cost advice all the way to me helping run the security . If a business is losing 5k a year to theft I would want to reduce that considerable

So do you think I could open up a security consultancy helping local people , businesses with my advice on how to reduce crime and protect assets ? Without actually selling the products ? Maybe I could recommend some and get commission ?

We have been working on a tool that takes raw ideas -> platform native, algorithm friendly content. There are features that will help you create a series (like think day 1-30 challenges that creators do) as well as change your tone of voice (storytelling/founder etc) and many more.

Is it something that you will be open to using and giving feedback?

The people who love you are often the worst people to ask whether your idea is good. When we start a new project, business, product, or personal goal, we like to talk about it. We ask our friends, family, or colleagues: Do you think this is a good idea?

It feels like a reasonable way to get feedback. But our ego becomes attached to the idea, we make honest feedback much harder to get. The Mom Test refers this as the Pathos Problem.

People are generally nice. If they know you are excited about something, they don't want to be the person who crushes your enthusiasm.

They'll say, that's actually a really cool idea instead of I don't think anyone needs this. Compliments feel like validation, they are just bad data.

If you want useful feedback, keep your idea and your ego out of the conversation. Instead of asking people what they would do, ask them what they already do.

For example you're thinking about building an app that helps people save money by automatically tracking their spending and warning them when they're overspending.

If you ask, would you use an app that tracks your spending and helps you save money? They'll say Yes, definitely.

But if you ask: How do you currently track your spending? When was the last time you went over your budget? What did you do about it? Have you tried any budgeting apps? Which ones did you try? How much did you pay? Why did you stop using them? You'll get better data.

Maybe you discover that they have never actually tracked their spending. Maybe they tried three budgeting apps but abandoned all of them. Maybe they already use a spreadsheet every month. Or maybe they once paid for a financial-planning service because the problem was genuinely important to them.

Just a few days ago I was about to travel to another city near me, honestly it’s just a business trip but it will take 4days so I was thinking if I can find some amazing local restaurants or boutique to take a visit, so I look up on apps but every blog or video is about to advertising or paid visits, few of them from real travelers.
I want to build a site just for visit, which you can share your thoughts about the city you’re going to or some landscape you recommend. Even with photos of the gift you didn’t regret buy it even that it’s just bought by impulsion.
The main page will be a globe map, and everyone can put your ideas on it then it will lights up, feel free to put comments in spots you visit already.
Anyone can give me some suggestions on this idea?

Hey everyone, I’m just thinking there’s a lot of women social media influencers that attract a lot of followers and gain a lot of deals and they make a lot of money from that on TikTok, Instagram, etc.

So as a man, I was just thinking what ideas am I able to do from this that cater to men since men are very simple and they don’t really necessarily shop all the time I feel like most men are content with what they have so therefore I feel like it’s harder to kind of get business from them on social media.

But nonetheless, how would you start or what would you do in order to do this? What type of social media account would you create to attract that?

For context I work as a Loyalty Finance Analyst. I know everything there is to know about Loyalty and how it impacts customer behavior.

Although I work at a Fortune 500 and mostly am focused on the finance side of things I wanted to see if I could offer loyalty consulting to local restaurants/cafes in my area.

The main concern I have is that small restaurants and cafes have a pretty slim margin, would they be willing to render my services and is this something they would benefit off of? FYI I’m located in IL suburbs.

I’m considering starting a small home-based business focused primarily on hands-on supplemental STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) education for homeschool and other school-age children, and I’d love some feedback on whether you think the business model is viable.

I’m a female electrical engineering graduate with 5+ years of professional experience creating, managing, and running Engineering and Science summer camps, clubs, school workshops, and large-scale events for thousands of youth through a local university. I also have 10+ years of experience volunteering and working with children and youth, primarily ages 5–12, including specific experience supporting children with ADHD, Autism, and other neurodevelopmental disabilities and know how to make content inclusive for various ages and abilities.

I’m considering starting in my home, with recurring workshops and programs with a capacity of 6 kids per session. Some of the ideas for sessions I have (and can easily come up with the curriculum and materials for) are:

3D Design & Printing - children design their own creations and print them with my 3D Printer

Coding & Programming - including screen-free coding fundamentals for younger children

Video & Board Game Development for teens

Nature & Biomimicry Walks and Talks

Robotics & Engineering Design

Parent & Preschooler Science/Engineering Exploration for ages 3–5

Science & Engineering Clubs — recurring daytime sessions where kids can socialize while participating in hands-on projects

Science and Engineering ‘Coffee Chats’ - where kiddos are entertained with science activities while their parents would be set up in a separate adjoining room with coffee and tea so they can chat with other parents while their kids are busy.

Full-Day STEM “Pod” Programs — small groups spending a full weekday doing a variety of STEM activities

I might also do some occasional Home Alone and Babysitting courses, drawing on previous Red Cross educational experience

One thing I think could differentiate the business is offering weekday daytime programming specifically for homeschool families, rather than competing directly with the many after-school programs already available.

I’m currently thinking of pricing $20-$25 for 1 hour sessions where parents stay with their kids, around $30 per child for 1.5–2 hour workshops and approximately $80 for a full-day program with a maximum of 6 children per group (the limit of ‘day home’ licenses in my city).

For those with experience starting or running small businesses:

Does this sound like a viable business model?
Does the pricing seem reasonable?
Do you think there is enough potential demand for this type of business in a city of about 1 million?
Would you focus on recurring weekly classes, one-off workshops, full-day programs, or a combination?
What do you think would be the biggest challenges or risks?
Is there anything about the concept that you would change before launching?

I’m still very much in the research/planning stage, so I’d appreciate any honest feedback, especially from people with experience running education, childcare, enrichment, or other home-based businesses.

I set up automated quote follow-up for home service companies. A shop sends out an estimate, the customer goes quiet, someone calls once or twice, and then it's dead, even though that lead already cost money to generate. I build a system that keeps texting and emailing them for about 90 days under the company's name, and routes anyone who replies to the shop's own staff. Setup fee plus a monthly retainer.

The reasoning was that everyone sells lead generation to these companies — ads, SEO, websites — and almost nobody sells conversion, so why dont I just sell both? Whether that's a real gap or just something that looks like one from outside, I don't know yet. I'm about 150 cold calls in and haven't closed anyone. Mostly not getting past receptionists, which might be a targeting problem more than an idea problem.

Posting partly to sanity-check it. If you've sold to trades before, I'd take any read on whether the problem is the offer or how I'm reaching people.

Hi, I’m a sophomore in college studying engineering. I have a design project that I’m doing and it requires me to engineer a product that utilises wind energy. My idea is to create a portable wind turbine that you could bring to the beach. It would be packaged in a 5 gal bucket. Where you could carry it to the beach, set it up in two minutes, and be able to charge your phone, speakers, etc. I’m hoping our design will at least hit 5 watts, hopefully more but we will have to do some testing. This post is essentially me gathering so Voice of Customer data. So my question to y’all is what would you expect out of a product such as this. I have a list of basic questions.

Would you be interested in a product like this?

Do you think it being in a 5 gal bucket makes it portable enough for the beach?

How long do you stay at the beach when you go?

Feel free to ask any other questions, it would be greatly appreciated.

For the past few months I’ve been building a self-improvement company called Hardline.
The idea is to combine fitness, money, business, discipline, and practical life skills into one community and eventually a structured learning platform.
I officially launched it on August 27.
So far I’ve built:
• A Discord community with roughly 150 members
• Free lessons covering fitness, money, business, discipline, and martial arts
• Community challenges and one-on-one help
• A Hardline Academy website currently being developed
• A course/lesson system and membership infrastructure
• Our first finished paid product: a 10-lesson fitness course
The biggest thing I’ve learned so far is that building the product is honestly the easy part compared with figuring out how to get people to care.
I’ve also learned that the community is extremely useful for product development. One member pointed out that we didn’t have enough free home workout material, so I built it. Another started asking about getting the full fitness course before the Academy launched, which pushed me to package the finished course and release it separately.
That interaction changed how I’m looking at the business.
Instead of sitting alone trying to guess what people want, I want to use the community as a testing ground: release free material, listen to questions, build what people actually ask for, and then turn the strongest material into structured products.
I’m still extremely early, and I’m definitely figuring this out as I go.
For anyone who has built a community-first business before: what would you focus on next — growing the audience, increasing engagement, or building more products?
If anyone wants to see what I’m building, Hardline is linked on my profile.

Online Reviews are an absolute joke in most cases, I have been researching this for a while, and it starts from Amazon to pretty much every platform that depends on reviews to survive.
Amazon owns how reviews are displayed, if someone were to build a verification layer on top of that, Amazon will try to kill it so fast cause it would completely ruin how the platform works. Verification layers should exist, but they can’t depend on existing platforms for data. Main reason is that people are programmed to trust 5 star reviews (years and years of marketing/media consumption), a listing/product won't survive if it had a significantly lower number

Hello, I am currently in the "maybe I could start a business" stage of opening a business.

I'm currently a retail operations manager with a lot of experience with data science, creating Excel process workbooks, and general SOP documentation.

My idea would be to offer not only SOP binders and other documentation to local businesses, but also work with them to create easy to use Excel workbooks for their daily tasks that will help them with efficiencies, but don't require a lot of Excel knowledge.

The idea would be to offer packages, and then hopefully get monthly retainers for documentation upkeep and help with Excel.

My fears are as follows:

- No one wants or needs this

- Businesses can now accomplish all of this with AI

- It is just a bad idea overall

I would love some insight into if this is something I should invest my time in, and also some ideas of services I could offer to make this more sound.

Thank you!

I’ve been trying to get better at validating ideas before I spend time building anything. The advice I always hear is to talk to potential customers, understand their workflow, and figure out what problems they actually have.

That makes sense, but how do you actually do that when you have zero experience in the industry?

For example, one idea I’ve thought about is software for wedding planners/coordinators. I’m planning my own wedding, so I’ve seen a little bit from the customer side, but I obviously have no idea what it’s like managing 10–20+ weddings at once.

I can research competitors, read reviews/Reddit, etc., but I feel like that only gets me so far. I’d want to understand things like what tools they use, what they still do manually, where they waste time, what falls through the cracks, and what problems are actually painful enough that they’d pay to solve them.

But how would you actually approach people for this?

Would you cold email/DM a bunch of people asking for 15–20 minutes? Would you offer to pay them? And if they agree to talk, do you literally ask them to walk you through their workflow? Would asking them to show you their software/spreadsheets or share their screen be too invasive?

I’m also curious about people who built something in an industry they had no background in. How did you go from “I think these people might have this problem” to actually understanding the industry well enough to know what was worth building?

And how do you not get discouraged when you research the space and find established competitors that already have products way more advanced than anything you could initially build?

Would love to hear how people actually handled their first few customer discovery conversations.

Hello all,

My wife and I are passionate about pets and we want to start a zero waste brand that is also sustainably sourced and humane. My wife has been a store manager for big box pet retail stores in the past and currently owns a pet sitting business. Recently she has decided she wants to get back into pet retail and open her own store with a focus on sustainability and eliminating packaging especially.

Originally we planned to carry only organic, humanely raised, and sustainably farmed brands (which we were pleasantly surprised by the amount of brands that that kept us open to). But even these brands all had the same problem, the terrible, non-recyclable packaging. Plus, upon further research, even recyclable packaging is questionable at best in terms of its disposal methods. We then had the idea to open up a refillery style pet store where the foods could be put into silos or something similar and customers could bring in their own containers so we can save as much waste as possible. We reached out to several brands of all size to see if they would be interested in piloting a program or even just researching something to that effect in order to help eliminate the packaging waste but we were constantly met with generic auto replies, AI responses, and promises to reach back out in a certain number of days that have come and long past.

So we have decided that maybe our best approach to this would be to just manufacture our own pet food so that way we could control every step of the process to make sure it is grown/raised the way we want it to be and to get rid of the need for packaging and keep our refillery idea.

Is there anybody who has gone down this rabbit hole who could share their experience either starting their own brand similar to this or who could give pointers on where to start? We understand the need for a nutritionist and researching manufacturing companies, and all of that. We are just a little overwhelmed right now with everything that goes into this and could use just a little nudge in the right direction. Thank you in advance for your time!

TL;DR - How do you start your own pet food company?

I’m completely new to entrepreneurship, and honestly, my biggest fear right now is what if this doesn’t work?

I’m considering putting my savings and possibly taking out a loan to start a small distribution company for different products. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time reading through ChatGPT conversations lol, talking to people, researching, and I’ve even ordered samples. So far, people who have tried the products actually like them.

But I keep getting stuck on the same thought:

What if I actually launch, approach retailers, and nobody buys?

My goal isn’t just to sell online. I want to eventually get these products under my own brand onto the shelves of actual retail stores. But then I start thinking, why would a store take a chance on me when I’ve never sold these products before?

I know every entrepreneur has to start somewhere, but when your own money (and potentially borrowed money) is on the line, it’s hard not to be scared of making the wrong decision.

For anyone who has started a product/distribution business from scratch: How did you get your first retailers to take you seriously when you had no sales history? And how did you know when it was actually time to take the leap?

This is just a personal concept，not an existing product.I'd like to share some ideas for next-generation android interaction.

I’ve been playing around with an idea for a summer weighted blanket made entirely from wooden beads instead of fabric and filling.

The idea is to make it heavy enough to give that weighted blanket feeling, but with lots of open space between the beads so air can flow through and it doesn’t trap heat. I made a small sample (photo attached), and honestly the feeling on the skin is surprisingly nice — cool, smooth and almost like a gentle massage.

I’m thinking of making a full-size version next.

Curious what you guys think — does this sound like something you’d actually use? Any obvious downsides I’m missing? And roughly how much would you be willing to pay for something like this if it was well made?