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.

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.

Being passionate and interested in a problem doesn't mean there is a market for said problem. This doesn't mean that it's not valid to feel that way, but a viable business might be hard if not impossible to build in that niche. Maybe I'm passionate about and interested in ornamental gourd futures [0], doesn't mean it's a way to build a business.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/kzoh1c/i_am...

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

Yea.. maybe change your focus?