If you are the first almost live form, you have plenty of time, and can evolved in an environment that has plenty of food. Something like the brown goo

If you are the first almost live form, you have plenty of time, and can evolved in an environment that has plenty of food. Something like the brown goo of Titan, with lots of hydrocarbons and other small molecules that you can pick up for free. But there's no food on Titan anywhere! There's no oxidizers for hydrocarbons to react with; hence no accessible chemical energy. That's likely generic for pre-biotic environments. Planets don't naturally form redox gradients; if there's a large redox potential, that's reactive chemistry, which will react away to equilibrium over geologic time. It takes work to maintain such a gradient; for example, Earth's oxidizing atmosphere is actively maintained by life. Oxygen is geologically removed from atmospheres, reacting with exposed rock surfaces (oxygen weathering). It takes active expenditure of work (solar energy) to keep it existing. There is some chemical energy in abiotic planets, but only small amounts, at very low power levels compared to Earth's aerobic biosphere (which eats something like 10^14 watts!). There's photochemistry caused by solar UV light, and there's atmospheric lightning (which is a major player in the Earth's N2 cycle). Most important is geochemical energy; i.e. primordial chemical gradients that aren't yet at equilibrium, because the two reactants are physically separated by rock layers. On Europa for example, a very slow process brings rocks into contact with the ocean, where slow serpentinization reactions can occur: oxidation of Fe++ to Fe+++ by water, with the production of H2. This would be the food source of Europa life, if it's there.