Quick lesson from my FindForce failure:

I spent 2 months building a business email finder. Perfect code. Zero customers. $0 revenue.

My mistake? I was scared of competitors (Hunter, Apollo). Thought I needed a "unique angle."

Wrong.

Those competitors weren’t obstacles—they were validation. Thousands of companies already paying for email finding = proven demand.

3 things I know now:

1. Competition = Validation Empty markets are usually red flags. Someone already tried. It failed. Or demand doesn’t exist.

2. Solopreneurs can’t educate markets Blue ocean strategies need teams + capital. We need validated demand.

3. Distribution > Product My clean code meant nothing. Nobody knew I existed.

What I’m doing differently:

• 40 cold LinkedIn DMs last week → 9 responses → 1 booked call
• Built awesome-directories.com (free, OSS) for audience first
• 10+ customer interviews BEFORE writing code next time

The framework: Look for crowded markets with broken execution. Not empty markets.

Full breakdown (with decision framework): https://meysam.io/blog/no-competition-red-flag-solopreneur-validated-market

Building in public. Documenting everything.

— Meysam