Quite true that market research is critical. However, the choice of potential markets to research is even more critical. One of the points I read frequently about successful startups is that the founders set out to solve some problem that they had: something that was interesting to them. Doing so gives you an inherent domain expertise - and internal motivator - you wouldn't have otherwise. For instance, I don't have any interest in having a home theater so working on software to control the different components of a home theater leaves me guessing, rather than knowing, what people with home theaters might want.
Couldn't agree more - the problem-fixing approach is fantastic for focus and motivation. My new startup follows this pattern, we're pre-commercial and the funders have got us to do market research in tandem with prototype development. I was a bit wary at first, wanting to jump into the problem fixing part with the engineer, but the more research I undertake, the more I realise that other people have also had the same problem, and tried to fix it; at least by knowing about these attempts we can save ourselves a lot of dead-ends in the problem fixing process.
