I will start off by saying, yes, the OP is really light on location and painpoints to have a real concrete conversation. I wish there was more detail about the environment and the hypothesis being tested.

Then I will say your first sentence is absolutely correct as well!

I just start to dislike the rest not because you're wrong, but, because:

> Because to be completely honest, no business would ever sign up for this, and no reasonable individuals will sign up to carry anonymous packages through customs. The people that would deal with this for whatever $25 you can pay them are exactly the people you should never trust to carry your customers' packages in the first place.

You don't know that! Where's the OP located? How is their culture? Is it high trust? Are they known to pull off shenanigans?

If your assumptions hold, you're absolutely correct, but as I wrote in another comment on this post - AirBnB grew exactly because the initial ecosystem was high trust because it was founded on gratitude. People like myself really appreciated that there was a place to sleep for 1/10th the price of a hotel and never wanted it to stop.

If the OP is in a country where the customs is corrupt, holds packages hostage unless you pay an arbitrary bribe, they could very well have a business where the ecosystem are a self selecting network of high trust individuals.

> I'm kinda going to guess that you fell into the trap of building something without validating the need for it first.

While this is likely, there's evidence that a lot of ultra successful companies started by the founders building something without validating the need for it at all, just like there's ample evidence of companies imploding because they did the same!

While Quibi failed horribly, Justin Kan willed Justin.tv into existence.

I don't want to beat a deadhorse about Dropbox, especially the infamous comment but I don't believe Drew did any market study about the feasibility of Dropbox - atleast the folklore is that he coded it up on a bus trip. He did follow that up with a simple 4-minute demo video showing the product kinda working but I argue that's not what you implied with "building something without validating the need for it first".

I predict that in this age of GenAI, the surface area is going to explode: so many new products will get created and new billionaires be minted that "building something without validating the need for it first" will only be left for people who want to be extraordinarily frugal, cautious and meticulous.

As engineers we don't give enough credit to simple randomness.

Luck and timing should not be underestimated. Sometimes that's the only differentiation.