[chadash]

If your idea solves any pain-point that some market has, then chances are someone else has thought of it. This is especially true in the consumer space, where you don't need deep industry knowledge to come up with an idea.

But very few people actually execute on ideas that they have. And even fewer successfully execute. This is why I like the advice from the book "The Lean Startup": if you think an idea is valuable, call up a product manager at the biggest player in the space and try to get them to steal your idea from you... the short answer is that they won't, because any successful company is flooded with good ideas and they have to be picky about which ones they pursue [1].

That said, people vastly underestimate the size of the market for many things and they assume that some competitor might keep them from taking off. Think of the tire market: how many people can give a good explanation of the difference between Michelin and Goodyear? Maybe 1% of people? Yet, but companies are huge. Now go to almost any other market (save for a few with network effects) and you'll find at least several competitors in the space. And if no one is competing in a space, sometimes that's a bad sign, not a good one if you are considering it.

[1] There are some ideas that are obvious, and they might already be pursuing, such as using LLMs to automate some aspect of customer service. That doesn't count as a stolen idea. Also, don't take this to the extreme. Obviously some ideas are valuable, but they tend to be things that require very deep expertise.