Thank you for the insight on the development process. Tbh, it seems a very reasonable path for the app without any economic and time pressure to succeed, considering you now have the perfect app for yourself.

It's too early to jump to conclusions without proper marketing for the app and any revenue-related metrics gathered.

The issue with delayed marketing can be that the product is too large to make changes fast and run experiments. Removing features considering committed resources would also be a challenge.

Regarding the Proxy Users, I think the idea is that customers should pay for a solution that solves a problem, not vice versa. You can install a session recording feature, watch app interactions occasionally, and do interviews with paying users (or invite active users to your podcast).