[wrath]

Good article but I would look at this "failure" from a glass half full perspective. You "won" because you've learned valuable lessons you can take to your next idea. I've had many products that have not gained many users in their respective marketplaces but I learned from each and everyone of them. All these experiences has brought me where I am today (CTO of a 45+ employee company). No failures in my past as far as i'm concerned; just lots of self teaching (that you can't get in school).

>> ""An Indian company expressed desire to buy something from me other than the thing I was building, so I should have built that instead.""

I may be the minority but I agree with him but on one condition. If this Indian company wanted to pay a small monthly subscription fee for your product I would never have agreed developing "their" ideas. I would have taken their feedback and put in the big pile with all the other feedback I gathered up. But I would have pitched this Indian company a different story, I would have pitched them a professional services contract instead of a product. I did something similar in the past and it worked out very well because in a business money is king. With no money you can't do the things you need to do, like attend conferences to sell your idea, buying adwords, hiring solid developers, paying yourself a salary so you can devote your time to the idea.

In my case the customer was willing to pay ~$10k a month to get what he wanted. We built it for him while building our own product. Once we got big enough and could sustain ourselves without our original customer, I gave the customer away. The developer who maintained the project was interest in taking on the project himself. We came up with a 6 month transition plan, including lots of product/project management help, office space, etc. It was a win/win situation at the end.

Doing this is not for everyone though. There are many days I cursed this customers for taking up the majority of our resources. We had to be very good at differentiating between their requirements and the markets requirements. We weren't perfect at it but it worked out in the end.