[invalidOrTaken]

This is a really good point.

Everything I've built on my own has been something I wanted. In some cases they were more complicated than I thought so I never got to the customer validation stage, but that wasn't quite the disaster it could have been, because cash wasn't the (only) motivation.

Except...when it was, and yeah, my bad. So on the one hand I look back and kick myself for not first probing the market, but then I also remember that I did probe it, found there wasn't one, and didn't really care.

It can be a fine line between building a "me-too" product and something that no one wants.