[wpietri]

It sounds to me like you haven't had much practice validating things. Nobody serious about this sort of validation would suggest you ask people what they want. Instead, when you think you know what people really want, it's your job to prove that.

Suppose that you make something that you're convinced is the best product in the world. You work for years, you spend millions. And then you launch. It turns out that nobody cares; you go bankrupt. Someone might ask: "Was it really a great product?" We could argue the answer to that, but I think it's the wrong question.

Businesses need to be sustainable. Some ideas work, some don't. I think the best thing we can do is to a) maximize our chances of success, and b) minimize the cost of our failures. I believe the only way to do that is to continuously and aggressively test our hypotheses. Otherwise, investment just ends up being the way we fool ourselves a little longer.

Products aren't art. They're commerce. If you want to do art, just do art.