Answering the right question

The most common cause of software startup death is building something nobody wants.  The lone-wolf developer who hides his project's nature (and even existence) from the outside world until its glorious 1.0 release often finds that there is a reason nobody had built the product before.  The right approach is to tell as many people about your idea as possible, as quickly as possible.  If you rapidly discover that your idea is something nobody cares about--and it probably is--then pat yourself on the back!  You've saved yourself many months of labor on a project doomed to failure.