Don’t dismiss the fact that you didn’t start trying to find a problem to start a business without knowing the vertical. You knew the industry not just from talking to customers - you were the first best customer of your own product. You had an “unfair advantage”.

I just can’t fathom how anyone thinks about starting a software business especially these days without first thinking about what their unfair advantage is when writing software is so easy with AI.

I will forever remember my experience with the development of a new tool in my job as an engineer in hazardous gas processing. We had a consultant who was developing this tool that worked in a double-act with one of our engineers, and they sat there watching us use the tool. Whenever there was something we found confusing or didn't work how we wanted it to, she just said "oh I'll change that right now, give me a sec... ok press refresh it should be working now".

This tool was mainly just a form with some free-text fields, some drop-down and email notifications of each workflow step. But the fact that it was developed by constantly iterating with the users, meant that it has been adopted universally and been incredibly efficient at managing this particular workflow.

It's the only example I can remember in my 20-year career where that happened. It is more typical that there's a vast disconnect between the people with the industry experience and the people with the skills to apply fundamental IT skills to product development.

In my particular example, the IT skills required were probably completely trivial for a professional, and all the value came from tight cooperation with users.