How financially secure were you when you discarded this idea, and what did you work on instead?
My experience is that which idea is "interesting and motivating enough" largely depends on your financial state. If I had £10m in the bank, I probably wouldn't be doing GrantTree (as much as it is a worthwhile business).
Another point worth making: once you've systematised the work on your business, you don't actually have to keep working on it yourself. You can hire others to do the boring bits (if it's making enough money). That will decrease your profit, but also your time investment.
Agree. I meant to put a note about this. I was quite financially secure and did not need the money. I would have doubled down on this idea if this was my only option for paying bills. But it wasn't and I could easily find a job that paid more and was more rewarding, hence why I killed the business. I feel like many software developers are in this position. While I'm no fan of a JOB the kind of job I can get as a software developer sets the bar pretty high in terms of replacing it with a business.
That said I've never been in it for the money. It's easy enough to get a job as a programmer. If all I was going for was making money, entrepreneurship makes no sense at all. So all I'm typically looking for is to cover my bills so my wife doesn't stress out too much.
Well, in my experience most developers who are working at a job don't set the bar quite so high. In fact, if they can make about 1/3 to 1/2 of their salary without having to work at a job, that's already considered a victory, although of course people don't stop there.
And that's kind of the point... once you've built a business that successfully and reliably provides 1/2 your previous salary without working for someone else (i.e. building a product or productised service, not a plain service/freelancing), you can probably increase that to 1x, 2x, etc... whereas before, there's a hard glass ceiling above you.
Obviously that equation is less appealing if you're already well off financially - hence your distate of the business idea you came up with.
Which is fine - one of my friends who applies this method has in fact done exactly the same thing - built a small business, figured out how it would be profitable, then decided that it wasn't the kind of business he cared about building, and so shut it down and looked at another idea.
Product-market fit and idea-founder fit are equally important - at least when you have the room/comfort to make those decisions!
My experience is that which idea is "interesting and motivating enough" largely depends on your financial state. If I had £10m in the bank, I probably wouldn't be doing GrantTree (as much as it is a worthwhile business).
Another point worth making: once you've systematised the work on your business, you don't actually have to keep working on it yourself. You can hire others to do the boring bits (if it's making enough money). That will decrease your profit, but also your time investment.