Sure, but it's not like someone just handed him a successful music blog. He worked hard on it, and parlayed it into something bigger. Isn't that practical?
> Jason Grishkoff built a $46,000/mo SaaS business helping musicians promote their music, and he did it in under a year.
When do you start the clock? If the business success is based on the blog's success, then arguably the clock starts when he first made the blog.
What I take away as important is that I was part of the problem I was solving, rather than an outsider observing. A blog with 5,000 followers is just as likely to understand that problem as a blog with 100,000 followers.
Because I was part of the problem, I was able to build a system that effectively solved it. Today, there are more than 200 blogs/channels using SubmitHub to receive their submissions -- and that happened in less than 10 months. The vast majority of them aren't there because Indie Shuffle did well; they're there because SubmitHub makes their lives better.
Just because you build something that you need does not mean that you will be successful. People do that all the time, and then wonder why they don't make it. In reality, it's incredibly difficult to get your product in front of people who need it, even if it solves their problems perfectly.
Not saying you don't deserve credit for the hard work you put into this - you absolutely do. Just keep in mind that having a great product that solves a real problem for people is not enough. You either need luck or a network effect (and then you still need a little luck).
One of those, despite being nice, will require overcoming a monstrous network effect to succeed (for example, a new Ebay or something like that).
The other is a much smaller and modest app that will not get as large as $46k/mo, but will not face any network effects.
What do you say to that person? Do you tell him to work hard on the second app, or to start a blog and work hard on that blog for 7 years, then take the first idea and build it?