Got rejected from a directory today for being "too UK". I think that's the best thing about my product

Submitted my CV tool to AlternativeTo this morning. Rejection came back within

hours: they don't accept apps "restricted to or targeted at a specific

geographical area". Too local. Too domestic.

Fair enough, their site, their rules. But it got me thinking, because the UK

focus is the entire reason the product works.

I'm building Sausage Dog (sausagedog.io). You upload your CV, paste a UK job

advert, and it rewrites your CV for that specific role without inventing

anything. Your dates, employers and qualifications stay exactly as they are.

I started it because I was applying for jobs myself and could see the game

had changed: every application needs to be bespoke now, and that punishes

people who are great at their jobs but hate writing about themselves.

The global players in this space treat the UK as a font change. Meanwhile CVs

here aren't resumes, NHS and Civil Service applications have their own rules

entirely (Success Profiles are a world of their own), and the advice

jobseekers get is mostly imported from the US and quietly wrong.

Being UK-only also means I can do things the big tools can't. I've been

collecting live data from UK job boards, tracking adverts hourly. One finding:

a fresh receptionist advert has a median of 21 applicants, a staff nurse

advert has 1. The jobs everyone calls "easy to get" have the longest queues.

That kind of research only works because I stayed narrow.

So the directory sees "too local". I see a moat that a global competitor

would have to burn years to copy.

Curious what others here think. Anyone else doubled down on a market that

platforms and directories treat as too small? Did staying narrow pay off,

or did the ceiling eventually hurt?