You are right, I am focusing on the second option, and to be able to do it, a company should have an appropriate setup.

I was thinking about it as well. May I ask how you figured out what products to build? Did you stick to the same business domain, learned about their problems, and then built a product?

>May I ask how you figured out what products to build?

I built products that I wanted. That probably isn't a commercially optimal approach.

Probably better commercially to pick a market, embed yourself in that market and learn what they want. You might end up building something you are less interested in though.

>Did you stick to the same business domain, learned about their problems, and then built a product?

I have 3 products now. In each case I released something bare-bones that I thought was useful then iterated like crazy on user feedback. I didn't know that much about each domain when I started (but I do now!).

If you are interested I've written quite a bit about my experiences at: https://www.successfulsoftware.net