DON'T DO IT!!! is a reality check for people about to start a business

What this app does

DON'T DO IT!!! is a business-assessment tool built around one honest question: should you actually do this? The free Reality Check walks you through eight stages — idea, customer, money, family, suppliers, assumptions, founder, and a stop rule — and scores your idea from 0 to 100 so you can see the expensive assumptions before they hit your bank account. The free Red-Flag Checklist does a faster pass and flags the warning signs that kill most small businesses: the boring, predictable reasons, not the dramatic ones.

For people who want to go deeper, there are affordable paid tools: an idea workbook, a cash survival calculator that maps your break-even and runway month by month, and a customer and supply script pack you can use in real conversations. Everything is grounded in what the numbers say, not what the hype says.

Who it's for

Anyone thinking about starting a business — especially the people who are good at what they do and are about to find out that's not the same as running a business. Tradespeople going out on their own, side-hustlers wondering whether to quit the day job, and founders on attempt two who swore they'd do it smarter this time.

The tone is provocative on purpose, but the target is always the idea, never the person. You'll never be made to feel stupid here. Walking away is treated as a win, not a failure — that's why every Reality Check ends with a stop rule you set yourself.

Who builds it

The app and the book behind it are the work of Jason Merrylees, a New Zealand founder who has started, run and (sometimes) closed more ventures than he'd like his accountant to know about. Everything here — the questions, the calculators, the scripts — comes from those wins, losses and expensive lessons in between. The book DON'T DO IT!!! is launching in November 2026.

We'd rather talk you out of a bad idea than console you after a good-looking one.