I made things because I legit thought, "these people are stupid, they haven't leveraged this brilliant insight, I can do this better," and then find out that no

I made things because I legit thought, "these people are stupid, they haven't leveraged this brilliant insight, I can do this better," and then find out that none of that is true. Dead demos include a protocol for encoding hashes in QR codes for tokenizing all the things in a supply chain, a marketplace for anonymously referring non-fit employees and coworkers out to recruiters to get them hired away, a collaboration tool for producing security features of a product using threat modelling, etc. The conceit beneath each of them was they weren't for anyone, they were in reaction to a situation, and a kind of expression of thwarted nerd revenge on the world. Maybe it's a great impetus for writing pop songs, (though perhaps more emo), but not for making tools for people. They were un-buyable and un-investable for all the reasons. The question I've learned to ask is, "is there a specific person you have talked to in the last 6 months who this is for and who wants this?" Can't say I always live by that advice, as I still have another troubled-loner-ware project in me, as the creative urge is merciless, but the one thing I would never do is discourage a friend, I would only accelerate them to their next conclusion. The best you can do is help them forward faster, and if they find a dealbreaker, it's better they find it fast and move on to the next one.