My views on market validation have changed with age. What I've observed after talking to hundreds of founders is that it's now so easy for someone to enter a market that it seems like those that are successful are the ones who managed to _create_ their market. No matter how smart or how good your idea is, many many successful ventures are successful because of some intangible / hard-to-reproduce circumstance that allowed them to create the market. It could be investor /pr momentum, connections, regulatory friction or some other intangible, but whatever it is - it's not something that could be easily reproduced because it's nuanced for every founder and company.

Yeah customers are market validation, not merely the existence of competition.

If your competitors have customers, I think that is a sign of market validation. If they do not, then you might not either.

This one strikes straight to the heart. We pivoted post YC batch to what was hot at the time and saw a lot of competition (some raising millions more than us). We thought this market validation. Five years later, almost every single company on that list has either died or pivoted.

Ignore the competition. Dont ignore their customers.

competition is for losers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-...

Why not check your passion and interest regardless of presence/lack of competition and then you can play a long game instead of being in a reactive state.

Ctrl-F: "Customer" (2 results) [both describing customers as a fungible always present entity that must deal with you].

Yea.. maybe change your focus?