Context 🛠️#

Before committing months of effort, it’s essential for me to ask a simple question: Is my idea worth pursuing?

As the founder of the Digital Bulletin Board DBB, my goal is to streamline how municipal agendas are published and accessed. I am not trying to quit my day job or build a large organization. This is a Level 1 business idea that should be manageable by me as a solo developer, with occasional outsourced help only if absolutely necessary.

Viability, for me, is about time, effort, and realistic upside. I want to know whether DBB has a believable path to reaching meaningful milestones like 100k to 1M ARR without unnecessary risk or complexity.

Say No to Excel Magic#

A common mistake founders make is relying on complex spreadsheets to forecast success. The thinking goes something like this: if the math works, the business must work. In practice, these models are fragile and misleading.

Problems with Excel driven forecasting:

• It hides the assumptions that actually matter
• It creates false confidence in uncertain numbers
• It focuses on outputs instead of real-world inputs

For DBB, building a detailed 36 month revenue model would not make the idea safer. It would only distract me from the core question: how many customers do I really need and can I realistically reach them?

Say No to Top-down Sizing#

Top-down sizing starts with a massive market and assumes I can capture a small percentage of it. While this looks impressive on a slide, it ignores the hardest part of building a product: getting someone to switch.

Why avoid top-down sizing:

• Market size numbers are often guesses layered on guesses
• Adoption friction is completely ignored
• Product specific constraints are hand-waved away

For DBB, saying “every city government is my market” sounds nice, but it does not help me understand whether any single city will actually adopt the product.

A Better Way — Fermi Estimates#

Instead, rely Fermi estimates. This approach uses rough order of magnitude calculations to test whether an idea makes sense before I invest deeply.

Fermi estimates force me to:

• Make assumptions explicit
• Use simple round numbers
• Identify which variables truly matter

For DBB, this means estimating things like:

• How many city agencies exist in a realistic beachhead
• How painful the current agenda posting workflow actually is
• Whether a simple 1k per month subscription creates enough value

This approach reveals whether the business can achieve its goal before you invest heavily, without relying on “magical” spreadsheet forecasts.