The majority of individuals working with AI focus on creating viral chatbots, impressive demos, or the latest trending tool. However, I believe the true financial potential — the kind that creates billion-dollar companies — lies elsewhere.

It’s found in the unappealing tasks that nobody wants to deal with: the mundane, time-consuming necessities. These are the chores you’d rather avoid but must complete. This is where the future of successful AI enterprises is headed.

Painful > pretty

AI that makes you laugh is fun. AI that gets your taxes filed, your Visa sorted or your documents organized? That’s life-changing.

When I relocated to the UK on a Global Talent visa, I couldn’t locate a tool to monitor my absence days, which was essential for maintaining my legal status. I decided to develop it myself, not as a display of skills, but to address a problem that was causing me significant concern.

That’s the kind of “boring” problem most people overlook. But if it causes stress, repetition or fear — it’s valuable.

There’s more money in fixing one painful workflow than chasing 100 likes on a fancy AI-generated avatar.

The more annoying it is, the bigger the opportunity

Booking medical appointments, sending out invoices, and selecting wines from extensive restaurant menus. These aren’t glamorous issues. Yet, they are pervasive, and most people dislike handling them.

I’ve created apps that tackle these exact problems. While some were mere side projects, they addressed issues that constantly arise for people. That’s the winning strategy.

In an earlier article — 7 AI-Based Business Ideas That Could Make You Rich — I mentioned that the most lucrative concepts are often right before our eyes. This situation is a perfect illustration of that principle.

No team? No problem.

The tools available now are ridiculous. With GPT-4o, Supabase, Vercel and Claude, I’ve launched entire products in a week — solo.

No designers. No backend engineers. Just a painful idea, an AI stack and a few cups of coffee.

I’m not the only one. I’ve seen one-person shops build apps that manage apartment leases, prep legal docs and even coach you through IVF. They’re quiet tools with unflashy interfaces, but they’re deeply useful.

If you’re a founder today, your MVP doesn’t need to be impressive — it just needs to make someone’s headache disappear.

Build for Tuesday, not for tech Twitter

Some of the smartest founders I know aren’t even trying to go viral. They’re building for Tuesdays — for that one problem that hits at 4:00 p.m. when you’re stuck in a bureaucratic loop and need someone (or something) to handle it for you.

And here’s the kicker: The more boring the problem, the less competition you’ll have. AI founders are still chasing novelty. That’s your advantage.

This article on overlooked metaverse jobs made a similar point: There’s a fortune in places people ignore.

Boring doesn’t mean small

If you told someone a decade ago that accounting automation or AI-powered scheduling tools would be billion-dollar companies, they’d probably laugh.

Now those tools run quietly in the background of almost every business.

The lesson: Don’t build for applause. Build for relief. If your product makes someone breathe easier, saves them time or reduces stress — they’ll pay for it.

Even if they never tweet about it.

Boring tools can still build billion-dollar companies

If you need proof, look at Expensify. It started by solving one thing: making expense reports less painful. It’s not exciting, not revolutionary — just useful. Nobody dreams about scanning receipts, but millions of people have to do it.

Now Expensify processes billions in transactions. All because it made one annoying task easier.

Same story with Calendly, which killed the back-and-forth of scheduling. DocuSign, which removed the pain of printing and scanning contracts. UiPath, which built a massive business by automating office tasks.

None of these were flashy, but they fixed something people deal with every day. That’s what makes them work.

If you’re building with AI, forget the hype. Look for the problems people quietly suffer through. The ones they never talk about publicly, but deal with constantly. That’s where the best ideas live.

Boring isn’t a weakness. Boring is a business model.

You don’t need a revolutionary idea. You just need to make one annoying thing go away.

If you can do that, it won’t matter how it looks. It will sell.