The "we chose a validated market so we could focus on learning distribution" framing is really smart and honestly something I wish I'd done earlier. I'm building a workspace/collaboration tool and spent way too long on the product side before realizing the distribution muscle is a completely separate skill that doesn't develop on its own.

One thing I've noticed from the sheets-as-backend pattern: the reason people keep reaching for spreadsheets is because the editing UX is instant and familiar.Any tool that wants to replace this for non-technical users needs to nail that "just click a cell and type" experience. That's the hard part honestly.