If you don't have first-hand contact with your potential users, and you don't know where they are, then you likely lack the empathy to build a great product for them.
He said „lack empathy for building this particular type of software“, meaning you would not be getting enough emotional feedback (due to lack of connections).
To give a more concrete example, I know of a successul life insurance company. It was started because the founders had a bad experience with purchasing life insurance. They then worked with (and as) life insurance agents to better understand the customer (and insurer's) needs. THEN they built a company, one solution at a time.
Q: I am having trouble with X; do you have any tips?
A: You are bad at X (but rephrased to make it sound like a character judgement).
Its good feedback that it is worded in a way that has ambiguous meanings, one of which (you are a sociopath) is an unwelcome character judgement. But IMHO the charitable interpretation is perfectly practical and important feedback: Don't build products for users you can't talk to and learn from.