I’ve received a lot of feedback about startup ideas over the years. I had this ‘aha!’ moment, when I realized I was in a Catch 22 and if I kept listening to people, I would never start a company.
It seems like there are two reasons people don't think a startup will succeed:
It has been ‘done before’
It hasn’t been ‘done before’ and if it were worth doing, someone would have done it.
It's a Catch 22. There are a lot of reasons to build or not build a company and if you do #1, you should certainly seek to differentiate. But, be careful of listening too much to other people, otherwise you may never take that first step.