Product StrategyEmerging Pattern

Catch emerging tool waves early by building adjacent services before competition

Q: How many founders have validated "catch emerging tool waves early by building adjacent services before competition"?

1 founder has proven this pattern works. Examples include Pontis (Cursor Directory).

When a new developer tool gains traction, there's a window to build supporting services (directories, rule collections, integrations) before the market gets crowded. Being first to aggregate and organize community knowledge around a hot tool captures massive organic growth as the tool's popularity rises.

When to use

When you notice a rapidly growing developer tool that lacks supporting infrastructure

Don't do this

Building directories for mature, saturated markets where aggregators already exist

1 Founder Who Did This

Cursor Directoryby Pontis

Built directory for Cursor rules when Cursor was growing but no central directory existed - just scattered GitHub gists

Result:2.2M unique visitors, 49K users, $35K/month in months by owning the category

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