Am I on the right track?

This might be a little long for the average reader. But i'll do my best to format it so it's skimmable. **Context** I left my SaaS company 2 months ago. I was employee number 4 and helped them grow to 8 figures. I had a seat at the executive table and equity in the business. Burnt out and wanted to start my own thing. I forgot how hard it is to go from 0 👉 1 **📚 Two schools of thought** 1. Build a product that solves your pain point and find others with that pain point 2. Perform customer discovery calls until you get signal and start building + follow up with them 🥇 **First approach** For the last 45 days I built the product I wished I had when leading a 10 person marketing/sales team for the SaaS I was previously at. It checked all the boxes, pulled data, automated specific steps, showed the conversion tracking, data, etc. I launched it as a beta to my close network and the crowd went MILD. 😒 After some follow up - I realized I built something that already kind of exists and it's hard to convince others (even those who personally know me) that it's different or better. Undiscouraged, I am going to go back to the drawing board and try approach #2 above and schedule some customer discovery calls. **🥈 Second approach** After trying and failing to turn the marketing numbers around at my last role I am convicted of 4 brutal truths about digital marketing today **Truth #1** – AI-generated content is flooding the internet and ANYONE can and will be creating content with AI. **Truth #2** – Ranking for high-volume keywords is harder than ever and probably not worth it anymore. **Truth #3** – AI-driven efficiency is non-negotiable. If you haven’t installed AI in your business - you are WAY behind. **Truth #4** – Most businesses are thinking about AI completely wrong. Easy button vs quality stair step. I have some early thoughts on how I would like to solve this (backed by data and some user stories). But my main question and the entire point of this post is.... **⁉️ Questions** Before I schedule these product discovery calls should I make it clear where I am convicted and find those who want to talk (agree or disagree) with the above. Or just keep that out of the mix and ask them my product discovery questions regardless? I am probably overthinking it - but I just hit up my personal network with a beta launch, feels silly to go back with product discovery questions for them. Is there a good place (besides reddit) to pay people for product discovery calls? A quick Google Search and it's unclear to me.