Workarounds Are the Best MVP Signal: How to Turn DIY Processes into a Wedge Product

If you’re building early-stage products, there’s one signal that beats “interest,” “engagement,” and even “complaints”:

Workarounds.

When someone says, “Here’s the spreadsheet/script/Zapier chain I built to survive,” they’re doing more than venting.

They’re paying with effort.

That makes workarounds one of the strongest indicators that:

• the pain is real
• the value is measurable
• a product can win by removing friction

This post shows you how to spot workaround signals on Reddit, separate real intent from casual hacks, and translate a messy DIY process into a wedge MVP that can get paid.

[IMAGE NEEDED: A “Workaround → Wedge MVP” flow diagram: Pain → DIY workaround → repeated step → wedge feature → paid workflow.]

Why Workarounds Beat Complaints

Complaints are cheap:

• “This sucks.”
• “I hate this.”
• “Why doesn’t anyone fix this?”

Workarounds are costly:

• “I made a spreadsheet to track this across clients.”
• “I wrote a script that runs nightly.”
• “I copy/paste between three tools.”
• “We hired someone part-time to do it.”

Effort is intent. Intent is value.

For overseas indie founders and early teams, this is gold: you can build an MVP that reduces real effort and charge for it.

What a “High-Intent Workaround” Looks Like

Not all workarounds are equal. Your job is to identify the ones that signal:

• repeatability
• urgency
• cost
• willingness to change behavior

High-intent workarounds usually have at least two of these traits:

• It’s done frequently (“every week”, “every client”, “every release”)
• It involves multiple tools stitched together
• It’s fragile (“breaks often”, “hard to maintain”)
• It requires manual copy/paste or reconciliation
• It involves paying humans (contractors, assistants)

[IMAGE NEEDED: A compact “workaround checklist” card with those traits.]

The Workaround Tax (The Hidden Budget)

Many “pre-revenue” customers already pay—just not to a SaaS product.

They pay through:

• time (hours/week)
• stress (cognitive load)
• risk (mistakes, outages, missed deadlines)
• people (hiring to patch a process)

If you can quantify the workaround tax, you can price your MVP:

• If the workaround consumes 4 hours/week, and the persona is a $60/hour operator, that’s $960/month of hidden cost.
• A $29–$99/month wedge is suddenly not expensive.

This framing turns “annoying” into “worth paying.”

How to Extract Workaround Signals from Reddit (A Practical Method)

When reading threads, look for these phrases:

• “My current process is…”
• “Here’s what I do…”
• “I made a spreadsheet…”
• “I wrote a script…”
• “We ended up building…”
• “The only way I can make it work is…”
• “I copy/paste from X to Y…”

Then capture:

• the workflow steps
• the most painful step
• what breaks
• what they tried before

Your goal is to reconstruct the process, not just the emotion.

The Translation: Workaround → Wedge MVP

The biggest mistake builders make is trying to “solve the entire problem.”

A wedge MVP does the opposite:

• pick the most repeated, high-friction step
• make that step 10× easier
• integrate into the existing workflow instead of replacing everything

Step 1: Map the workaround as a sequence

Write it as a numbered flow:

1. Export data from Tool A
2. Clean it in a spreadsheet
3. Paste into Tool B
4. Reconcile mismatches manually
5. Send report to stakeholders

Step 2: Find the “painful repetition”

Look for the step that is:

• repeated frequently
• error-prone
• hard to delegate
• hard to automate with generic tools

Step 3: Build the wedge feature

A wedge feature is usually one of:

• a reliable sync
• a structured extraction
• a one-click reconciliation
• a consistent template output

Step 4: Keep the interface where they already work

Workarounds often happen in context:

• in a browser
• in a spreadsheet
• in a project tool

If you can meet them there, adoption friction drops.

[IMAGE NEEDED: “Wedge feature examples” grid: sync, extract, reconcile, template.]

The Devil’s Advocate: When Workarounds Lie

Workarounds can mislead you if:

• they’re one-off hacks for edge cases
• the persona has no budget authority
• the workaround exists because the user enjoys tinkering
• the “solution” is already available and good enough

To protect yourself, collect anti-evidence:

• “We solved it with X”
• “Not worth paying for”
• “Too risky / privacy”

If anti-evidence dominates, the wedge might be wrong—or the segment is wrong.

A Mini Template You Can Reuse (Workaround Brief)

Persona

Role + context:

Workaround (as steps)

1.2.3.

Workaround tax

• time:
• risk:
• money:

Wedge MVP hypothesis

If we make step (N) effortless, they’ll pay (price range) because (reason).

Evidence Pack

• Quote + permalink
• Quote + permalink

Anti-evidence

• Quote + permalink

What to Do Next

If you found a high-intent workaround, your next best move is:

1. List 10 people who described the workaround.
2. Ask a single question: “What part of this process is the most painful?”
3. Offer a concierge version of the wedge (manual is fine).
4. Charge for it early, even if it’s rough.

This is how you avoid building a polished product for a problem that wasn’t pay-worthy.