Launching today
Do Not Build
Know if a software market is worth your next year
5 followers
Know if a software market is worth your next year
5 followers
You get a few real attempts at building a company. Pick the wrong market and you burn a year finding out. Do Not Build measures the field before you commit: who's already there, what a customer costs, what it couldn't measure, and the founders circling the same market. So the year goes on a choice, not a guess — and if it works, it becomes a company instead of a lesson. The verdict is where you start, not the decision. 245 screened, 64 cautions at the build line.
Hey Product Hunt 👋
I used to run a venture studio. The most expensive thing we ever did wasn't building something badly. It was picking the wrong market. You don't find out for about a year, and by then the year is gone.
So I built the tool I wanted back then. It's a project, not a company, and I still run it on my own ideas more than anyone else does.
Type in a software market. "Dental practice management software", "AI receptionist", whatever you've been circling. It crawls everyone already selling into that need, judges each one against it, and comes back with build, caution or avoid. Underneath: who's already there, which moats are structural versus which are just code somebody wrote first, and a publisher behind every number, from the Census to the Keyword Planner to G2.
Three words can't hold a market, so the verdict is where you start rather than the decision. 64 of the 127 cautions sit right at the build line, each with something specific still to fix. Around the verdict you get what you need to work one of them out: categories where a model-native company has already turned up, what one customer costs country by country (same market, 2.9x cheaper one border over), and who's worth twenty minutes with a cited first draft that you send, not the system. The point is that the year goes on a choice rather than a guess, and if it works, becomes a company instead of a lesson.
Then there's the half I can't build on my own. Every market has a room, free on any plan, so people circling the same category can find each other. Nobody's in them yet. That's the honest state of it, and it's most of why I'm launching now instead of sitting on it another six months.
245 markets screened so far, every one free to read with the evidence behind it and no signup: donotbuild.com/verdicts
A free account gets you one screen of your own market a month.
So what are you circling? Say it in the comments. If two of you name the same thing, that's the whole idea. And if you run a screen and think the verdict's wrong, tell me. I'd rather hear that now than in six months.