This disappointingly reminds me of that post a while ago from the guy who finally got into YC after 8 tries or something, not because he found a great problem to solve with a great solution but because he really wanted to get into YC and found a formula that would at least open that door (small business CRM).

If you want to find traction without a product, I strongly recommend reading "The Mom Test" and following the advice in there - it's going to get you much farther than what this team did. If you don't want to do that, at least follow the often-repeated advice of YC itself for startups:

- Scratch your own itch

- Be in love with the problem

- Talk to potential customers to find what they need, not what they want

Then you can iterate on an MVP like this team did, but hopefully with less wandering and head scratching in the beginning. If your starting goal is "I want to start a startup" and you then go looking for a product to shoehorn into a market, I think you're doing it wrong and you should probably stick with working a day job.