I may have been too loose with my wording. Lots of people can come up with concepts and ideas. Everyone used to have an idea for an app back when it was cool, I thought about location based dating apps maybe 5-10 years before they became a thing. I'm certain there were at least a few hundred thousand people if not more who had a similar idea - that's what I meant, that's the cheap part. Actually working late nights or even quitting your job to implement the idea, or having the right network and social skills to make it happen - that part is rare. Even today with agents it's still hard and rare to create a profitable business. So we weren't talking about the same thing.

> And that just makes people feel bad. Someone working for 2 1/2 years on an idea that just happens to come out on the Internet is not going to feel good

This was more than an idea for you and more than a hobbey at least according to my definitions of those terms. I'd call it a passion research / early stage business venture depending on how much effort you put into it and what your intentions for it were.