[jamesbritt]

Counterdote: One company I was with created a product to solve our own problem (time-tracking for projects) and while we loved it we did not find anywhere near enough other people to buy it.

If you're going to be building something anyway, even if there's no market for it, that's fine. If you simply assume that a given solution to a problem that happens to please a handful of geeks is going to please many, many more, you may be in for disappointment.

In retrospect we screwed up by not first validating the market for what we were so sure people would want.

A corollary here is that, for all I know, people would have loved the product if we pitched it to them correctly. Being unable to sell/market a good product is as bad as having a dud offering.

In any event it is far from a given that scratching your own itch means you have market validation.

I've become increasingly convinced of sales+marketing first, serious product building after validation of the idea and of the ability to sell it.