Build a product or a product builder?
You have this idea, and you start getting excited. You’ve made your research but it’s niche.
So you consider option 2, what if you build a highly customizable solution in which anyone could build the solution you wanted to develop.
For example instead of building a Dropbox-Gmail integration you come up with Zapier. I don't know if this fits into a Productized Service.
Does it happen to anyone else?
Focus on the product's uniqueness. That way you can launch your product with low costs, low risks and most importantly in less time. You can worry about building a product builder in the long-run if your users actually want such a thing.
Hmmm... I see your conundrum. My reaction (like others I see now below) is that you start with a product. Niche is not bad, niche can be good! Much easier to understand everything about the customer. To build a ' highly customizable solution in which anyone could build the solution you wanted to develop' feels very 'Meta'. This requiring a much larger team/funding ... and the customers? who are the customers? the customers are those that will create solutions using your solution for the other 'real' customers... Argh. Build a product, have fun.
What about instead of building the product builder, build the product builder builder 😝
Using your analogy, I would start with the Dropbox-Gmail integration. This way I could validate if people are actually interested in this kind of integrations. I could event put "fake" options that could only help to track the interest on the overall "Zapier" solution.. With these learnings you could decide if:
In summary, I would recommend building something small you can start testing and let the user's tell you what to build, this way you can avoid taking expensive miscalculated steps.
Being niche is not a bad thing. You want to get comfortable with the niche you choose with and learn how to sell to them. If you go more general it'll be harder to figure out who your first customers will be and you'll end up making a meh product for a few groups rather than a great product for one group.
If you build the highly customizable solution, then you should be able to crank out multiple MVPs in no time and pivot to whichever one(s) get traction.
I build the product. But I have slowly come to the realization that finding/building the audience is likely more important. That way you could learn from your potential customers whether the product or the product builder is more important.