I spent two months building FindForce. Excellent architecture. Clear code. Zero customers. Zero revenue.
The moment that broke me wasn’t the blank dashboard. It was no longer a cricket after launch. This was looking at my payment provider page $0.00 In revenue – the only metric that really matters.
All that beautiful infrastructure? All those nights and weekends? All that SRE expertise I spent 8 years developing?
Makes no sense.
Because no one was paying.
I fell into the trap of “no competition”
I created FindForce as a business email finder Chrome extension. Simple premise: Help sales teams find and verify emails with 95% accuracy.
When I started researching the market, I found the giants: Hunter, Apollo, and dozens of others. My first reaction? Fear,
“How can I compete with them? They have teams. They have funding. They have thousands of customers.”
So I looked for an angle. a gap. Some? they weren’t,
I found one: flat-rate pricing. Exceptional customer support. pace.
Here’s what I missed: They were not competitive barriers. They were validation.
thousands of companies were already payment of For email search tools. The demand was proved. The problem was real. Budget was allotted to the people.
My job was not to invent a new category. My job was to make it better for a specific class.
But I was too busy being proud of my “unique perspective” to see it.
How my SRE background betrayed me
I spent 8 years as an SRE engineer. I built internal tools for development teams. Kubernetes Cluster. CI/CD Pipeline. Infrastructure automation.
Here’s the thing about internal tools: If you make them well, people use them. There is clear communication. Defined requirements. Immediate response.
My mental model was wrong.
I thought: “If I build it excellently, they will come.”
This works if your customers are coworkers in the next room. This doesn’t work if your customers are strangers on the Internet who have never heard of you.
I was two layers removed From real end users:
- Internal tools serve dev teams
- Dev teams provide service to external customers
- I never had to think about external customers
So I optimized for 10,000 users before I had 10. I built for scale before the demand came. I fixed the infrastructure before confirming the problem.
Classic engineer’s mistake.
The reddit post that changed everything
Last week, frustrated by the FindForce failure, I wrote a post on X:
“Unpopular Opinion: If No One Is Working on Your Startup Idea, That’s Usually a Red Flag, Not an Opportunity.”
Got some traction. Felt courageous. Tried it on Reddit.
160+ upvotes. 60+ comments. 48,000+ views.
The most viral moment of my 30 years on this planet.
Here’s the argument I made:
No competition often means:
- no demand exists
- Customer acquisition costs are too high
- The burden of market education is too heavy for small teams
- Regulatory hurdles make it unviable
The sweet spot is not an empty market. It’s a crowded market with broken execution.
The reactions were fascinating. Some people agreed violently. Others told me about exceptions: Airbnb, Uber, blue ocean strategies.
They were both right.
The Details No One Talks About (Solopreneur Reality)
Here’s what I should have said in that Reddit post:
For VC-backed teams with deep pockets, blue ocean strategies can work.
You can afford:
- A GTM team to educate the market
- For designers and engineers to iterate quickly
- Geographical advantage (SF networking, warm introductions)
- Several attempts before running out of runway
For solo entrepreneurs, immigrants, new parents with limited time and zero networks? Completely different game.
I am all three. Iranian immigrants. New father. Building from home. No alumni network. No conference circuit. No warm introduction.
I have to do it Cold DM and Cold Email Outreach For everyone. alone. Customer conversation.
last week i sent 40 cold linkedin messages To my ICP. get 9 reactionsbooked 1 customer discovery call,
This is the reality. Not 100 interviews. No warm introduction through YC. Not Stanford or MIT’s network.
Just me, a spreadsheet, and a lot of rejection.
When “No Competition” Can Really Work
I’m not saying that blue ocean strategies never work for solopreneurs. But you need specific conditions:
✅ You can pursue the idea without competition if:
1. You have deep domain expertise
- you’re not flying blind
- you understand the problem deeply
- you’ve lived it for years
2. You have done 10+ customer interviews
- They are actively complaining about pain
- They’re Already Trying to Solve It (Badly)
- They have been allocated a budget
3. The market just changed
- New regulation created the need
- New technology has made it possible
- timing is everything
4. You have an existing audience
- you’re not starting from scratch
- you have distribution built in
- Think: YouTuber Launching SaaS
5. It’s too small a place for VCs, too big to ignore
- not enterprise-scale
- but sustainable for one person
- Example: specific industry equipment
❌ Do not pursue competing ideas if:
- You’re learning the industry while you build
- You have no audience or network
- You need quick revenue to survive
- It will take years to learn the market
- You’re a solo tech founder with zero sales experience (hi, that was me)
What am I doing differently now (publicly created)
I have completed construction in a vacuum. Here’s my new playbook:
1. Delivery first, product second
I just launched Awesome-directories.com – a curated directory aggregator for indie hackers. 300+ directories, open source, Apache-2 license, completely free.
this is Antonym Findforce’s:
- FindForce: Attempted to find manufactured products → users
- amazing-directories: Build for community → Recognition → Audience → Monetize later (maybe not!)
Why? Because When you give first, people listen to you.
I am not charging. No paywall. No “freemium” traps. Absolutely pure value.
If people subscribe to my newsletter or buy me a coffee, that’s great. If not, I’m still building trust and validation.
2. Ruthless customer search
Before I write a line of code for my next SaaS, this is what I do:
- 200 cold linkedin dm (sent 40 last week)
- aim for 6+ customer discovery calls booked
- asking about them last painful experience with problem
- Checking whether they are already paying for the solution
- Understanding Why they are not satisfied
I am doing A/B testing my outreach messagesData-driven iteration, The Engineer’s Approach to Sales,
Does it hurt when 31 out of 40 people ignore me? Yes.
Should I keep going? Yes also.
Resilience and perseverance are founding prerequisites.
3. Value-first, always
Every piece of content. Every device. Every conversation.
Give, give, give. Ask a little.
This is how you build an audience as an unknown immigrant founder with no network.
Outline: Should you adopt your “no competition” idea?
Here is my decision tree for solopreneurs:
Step 1: Count Competitors
- 0-1 contestant: 🚩High risk. Proceed with extreme caution.
- Contestants 2-10: ✅ Okay. The demand is acceptable.
- 10+ Contestants: ⚠️ Can you tell the difference? Have you gained an unfair advantage?
Step 2: Talk to Customers First
- Before writing the code: Minimum 10+ customer interviews
- Ask: “Tell me the last time you had this problem”
- Ask: “What are you currently using to solve this?”
- Ask: “What do you dislike about the current solutions?”
- red flag: If they’re not actively looking for solutions, the problem isn’t that big
Step 3: Check Your Resources
- Time: Can you afford 6-12 months of market education?
- Wealth: Can you survive without revenue during that period?
- network: Can you access your ICP without paid ads?
- Expertise: Do you understand this domain deeply?
If you answered “No” to 2+ questions, select a valid market.
Step 4: Look for these green flags
- ✅ Competitors exist but execution is broken
- ✅ Customers are complaining publicly about current solutions
- ✅ You have an unfair advantage (expertise, audience, speed)
- ✅ Clear, specific space that you can dominate
- ✅ People are actively searching for solutions (Google/Reddit evidence)
Step 5: Make the call
- blue Ocean: Only if you have the resources, network or deep expertise
- Valid Market: Default option for bootstrapped solo entrepreneurs
- Crowded Market: Your best bet – demand is proven, implementation is not improvable
The honest truth: I’m still figuring it out
I haven’t cracked the code. I’m not writing this from a boat.
I’m writing this from my home office, with a 4-month-old son in the next room, trying to create something that makes sense while coldly reaching out to strangers.
But here’s what I know for sure:
Competition validates demand. I was afraid of Hunter and Apollo. I should have been grateful that they existed.
Technical excellence means nothing without customers. My clean code doesn’t matter. My 95% accuracy doesn’t matter. Nothing matters unless someone pays.
Delivery > Product. Always. The best product that no one knows about is useless.
Solopreneurs cannot afford to educate the markets. Leave the blue oceans to funded teams. You need valid demand.
Give first, ask later. Build trust through value. Amazing-Directories is my bet on this strategy.
what happens next
I am continuing the 200 Cold DM experiment. I will share the results – success or failure.
I’m publicly creating awesome-directories, documenting everything.
I’m doing customer discovery right this time. Every conversation. Every pattern. Every insight.
and i’m accepting it progress beats perfection Every time.
Will this work? I don’t know.
But I am showing. I am pushing. I am learning.
This is the only way forward.
Key points for solo entrepreneurs
If you only remember three things from this post:
1. Competition = Recognition If someone isn’t doing it, ask “why” before assuming you’ve found a difference. Most gaps exist because there are no demanding or prohibitive constraints.
2. Talk to customers before construction Minimum 10+ interviews. Ask about their past behavior, not about an imaginary future. “Will you use it?” It’s a useless question.
3. Delivery first Build audience through free pricing (tools, content, templates). faith compound. Then sell to people who already know and like you.
stay connected
I am documenting this entire journey publicly. Every lesson, every mistake, every success.
Choose your platform:
No sparkles. No overnight success stories. Just raw documentation from the trenches.
What do you think? Am I wrong about the “no competition” trap? Have you succeeded in the blue ocean as a solo entrepreneur? Reply and let me know – I read every message.