“I'm having this issue as someone who's doing this so I started researching other people who were doing similar things in in that space and I saw that they were having the same similar issues and I'm like well if I'm not the only one having the issues and they're having these issues that must mean there's a gap here somewhere”

Hit the gap you hit — then check peers feel it too

Spencer found product-market fit by being his own first user. Day-trading with a partner surfaced a workflow problem; researching peers in the same niche confirmed the same gap existed for others. That overlap — your own pain plus a tribe sharing it — is the validation signal worth building on.