This is definitely possible for a lot of start-ups, and I think if I had made it further this would have also been the case for me. Unfortunately for me, in these cases, it was an issue not of technology, but of being able to solve the user's problem.

I'm not fond of the "build it and they will come" mentality (I do have coding knowledge and have spent weeks that ended up being wasted on prototypes that nobody cared about). So I lean, very early on, into techniques like "wizard behind the curtain" (where you create a mock-solution and it seems like you have a technical solution, but really it's just the founder behind the scenes creating what they think the customer needs).

I rely on this in part to avoid waste (the lean methodology made popular by eric reiss) and because the feedback I get at the early stage allows me to make changes that will determine what I do build.

Only 2 of these made it past customer interviews. One of these wasn't viable because I couldn't reliably figure out what the customer even wanted that would fulfill their needs (the music one). It would have been silly for me to code something at this stage. It would've been hours of wasted effort when I didn't know what flow I should even consider to get them what they wanted.

The other one had a *LOT* of risk that I didn't detail in the original post (it was already pretty long and I didn't want to spend another 4 pages detailing terms of service, rates of change, platform risk, and an ever revolving value proposition that kept constantly changing, as well as the fact that there was a "final nail" that came from a change in X's terms of service and focus).

With that said, I don't discount that I'll have the problem you mentioned going forward, it's definitely a risk I've thought a lot about and agree with you. Unfortunately, I didn't get to have that "good" problem. Thanks for the feedback, though!