Building got cheaper. The nearby market got crowded.

Hey IH — quick reflection, not a feature drop.

ObjectRemover is a browser tool: type what to remove from a video or photo. Live since March. I did not run a real launch campaign. Traffic still shows up every day from Google. That only looks obvious after two products that did not pull.

I built a YouTube / TikTok analytics tool first. I could keep shipping features. I could not get users or revenue. I shut it down.

Then an AI crypto trading bot. The product is real enough to hand off. I cannot operate it under local rules, so I am preparing to sell it to an operator who can. The contrast is what stuck.

A few years ago an idea meant a PM, a team, and about three months before the market said anything. A miss cost a quarter. Now one person can ship with AI tools and change direction in a week. The expensive part is no longer “can we build it.”

The hard part moved. More people can ship, so the nearest slice of demand gets crowded. If you only stare at the job in front of you, you may never get it. I would rather make a product specific enough to travel than fight harder over a local category.

Young makers and people who already built companies are in the same queue. The tools do not care which you are.

If a project is hard because the work is real, keep going. If it is hard because nobody is pulling, I stop and look at the direction.

Curious how other people here decide that line — when do you persist, and when do you treat “this is too hard” as a signal the idea is wrong?